Diarmaid Ferriter

Diarmaid Ferriter (born February 1972) is an Irish historian, broadcaster, and university professor. He has written fourteen books on the subject of Irish history, and co-authored another. Ferriter attended St. Benildus College in Kilmacud in Dublin and University College Dublin.

Career Since 2008, Ferriter is Professor of Modern Irish History at University College Dublin. He was formerly a senior lecturer in history at St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin City University, and he was Burns Scholar at Boston College from 2008 to 2009. From 2003 to 2009, Ferriter hosted What If, a Sunday morning radio programme on RTÉ 1 and presented RTE's The History Show from 2011 to 2012. He continues to cover a range of Irish historical matters on RTE and the BBC. His 2007 biography of Éamon de Valera, Judging Dev, won in three categories of the 2008 Irish Book Awards. In 2013, he publicly supported the political campaign Democracy Matters, which opposed proposals to abolish the Irish Senate. He was also centrally involved in the campaign to retain history as a core subject on the Irish Junior Certificate curriculum. In 2014, he began writing as a weekly columnist for The Irish Times. He presents the weekly RTE history podcast, What Were We Like?, with archivist Catriona Crowe. In March 2019, Ferriter was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy, Ireland's highest academic honour, for being "the most consistently innovative interpreter of the modern Irish historical experience".

Personal life Ferriter is married to Sheila Maher; they live in Dublin with their three children.