BIOGRAPHY:

A prolific writer and international speaker, Professor Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin is the inaugural holder of The Johnson Chair in Québec and Canadian Irish Studies in The School of Canadian Irish Studies, Concordia University, Montréal.  SCIS offers a Major, Minor and Certificate in Canadian Irish Studies, as well as graduate and post doctoral research opportunities.  Courses focus on Ireland’s extraordinary history and culture; the Great Famine and the resulting global Irish diaspora; its modern transformation in the Celtic Tiger era; and the social, cultural, economic, religious, educational and political contributions of Irish immigrants to Canada.

Since coming to Concordia in 2009, Ó hAllmhuráin has secured, as principal investigator and co-investigator on multi-institutional research teams, more than $2 million in funding from provincial and federal sources. His graduate students have secured in excess of $300,000 from provincial, federal and international sources since 2012.

From 2000-2009, Ó hAllmhuráin was The Jefferson Smurfit Professor of Irish Studies and Professor of Music at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.  A five-time All Ireland Champion uilleann piper and concertina player, he has presented over 1,000 concerts on four continents during the past thirty years.  He is also an extern advisor for the Centre for Irish Studies at the National University of Ireland-Galway and is involved with several research collaboratives in the European Union and North America.

In 2016, Ó hAllmhuráin’s long awaited Flowing Tides – History and Memory in an Irish Soundscape will be published by Oxford University Press.

He is also researching and producing a documentary entitled “The Un-quiet Ghost of The Carricks: Memory of the Great Irish Famine in Québec’s Gaspé Peninsula.” 

In addition to his A Pocket History of Irish Traditional Music (O’Brien Press, Dublin 1998/2003/2008/ 2013 Kindle edition), Ó hAllmhuráin has published numerous book chapters, academic articles, encyclopedia entries, and liner essays on Irish music and cultural history.

Fluent in French, Irish and English, Dr. Ó hAllmhuráin has been featured on RCI: Radio Canada International, CBC (Canada), RTE (Ireland), TG4 (Ireland), BBC (UK), Vox TV (Canada), PBS (USA) and TF1 (France). He has consulted on various award-winning documentaries on Irish cultural history, including the 1998 Disney/PBS mini series The Irish in America: Long Journey Home, and Photos to Send: Retracing Dorothea Lange’s Travels through Ireland, an award winning documentary on the American photographer’s visit to Ireland in 1955.

His commercial recordings include: Traditional Music From Clare and Beyond (1996), Tracin’ – Traditional Music from the West of Ireland (1999), The Independence Suite – Traditional Music from Ireland, Scotland and Cape Breton (2004), and the ethnographic recording Paddy Murphy: Field Recordings from a Pioneer of the Irish Concertina(2007), which was also published as a digital archive (2008