Dr Richard McMahon
Research interests
Modern Irish, British and American history with a particular focus on the comparative and transnational history of violence and the law.
Publications
Monographs
Richard Mc Mahon, Homicide in pre-Famine and Famine Ireland (Liverpool University Press, 2013, paperback, 2017).
Edited collections /special editions of journals
Richard Mc Mahon and Andrew Newby, Ireland and Finland, c. 1860-1930: Comparisons and Transnational Perspectives, Irish Historical Studies, November 2017.
Richard Mc Mahon, Randolph Roth and Joachim Eibach (eds.), Making sense of violence: essays on interpersonal violence in early modern and modern Europe (special edition of the journal Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, 17.2, 2013).
Richard Mc Mahon (ed.), Crime, law and popular culture in Europe 1500-1900 (Willan Publishing, 2008).
Series Editor (with Dr. Ciara Molloy) - Studies in Irish Crime History with Cork University Press
1. Brian Hanley, Republicanism, Crime and Paramilitary Policing, 1916-2020 (Cork, 2022).
2. Aogán Mulcahy, Crime and Conflict in Northern Ireland, 1921-2021 (Cork, 2023).
3. Brian Griffin, Crime and the Criminal Classes in Ireland, 1870–1920 (Cork, 2024)
Articles
‘Towards a global history of interpersonal violence in the long nineteenth century’ in Mark Finnane (ed.), A Global History of Crime and Punishment in the Age of Empire (Bloomsbury, 2023).
Ireland and Finland: reflections on comparative and transnational histories’ (introduction) in Richard Mc Mahon and Andrew Newby, Ireland and Finland, c. 1860-1930: Comparisons and Transnational Perspectives, Irish Historical Studies, November 2017.
‘Irish Chicagoans, nationalism and the commemoration of revolution in 1898’, Éire–Ireland 51: 1&2, 2016, pp 218-43.
‘Histories of interpersonal violence in Europe and North America (1700-present)’ in Paul Knepper and Anja Johansen (ed.), Oxford Handbook on the History of Crime and Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press, 2016), pp 111-131.
Making sense of violence? Reflections on the history of interpersonal violence in Europe in Richard Mc Mahon, Randolph Roth and Joachim Eibach (eds.), Making sense of violence: essays on interpersonal violence in early modern and modern Europe (special edition of the journal Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, 17.2 2013, pp. 5-26).
The city and violence in Europe and North America: a historiographical review in Klaus Weinhauer and Dagmar Ellerbrock (eds.) City, violence and security since the 19th century (special issue of the journal Informationen zur Modernen Stadtgeschichte, 2.2013).
‘let the law take its course’: Punishment and the exercise of the prerogative of mercy in pre-Famine and Famine Ireland in Seán Patrick Donlan and Michael Brown (eds.), The Boundaries of the State: Law in Ireland, 1687-1850 (Ashgate, 2011), pp 133-164.
‘A violent society’? Homicide rates in Ireland, 1831-1850, Irish Economic and Social History, xxxvi, 2009, pp. 1-20.
The setting aside of jurors in pre-Famine Ireland in Laura Beck Varela (ed.), Yearbook of Young Legal History/Jahrbuch junge Rechtsgeschichte (Munich, 2009).
‘For fear of the vengeance’: the prosecution of homicide in pre-Famine and Famine Ireland in Richard Mc Mahon (ed.), Crime, law and popular culture in Europe 1500-1900 (Willan, 2008), pp. 138-189.
‘The madness of party’: sectarian homicide in Ireland, 1801-50, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, 11, 1, 2007, pp. 83-112.
‘Do you want to pick a fight out of me, or what do you want?’: homicide and personal animosity in pre-Famine and Famine Ireland in Katherine D. Watson (ed.), Assaulting the past: violence and civilisation in historical context (Newcastle, 2007), pp. 222-49.
The courts of petty sessions and society in pre-Famine Galway in Raymond Gillespie (ed.), The re-making of modern Ireland: essays in honour of J.C. Beckett (Dublin, 2003), pp. 101-137.
Manor courts in the west of Ireland before the Famine in Desmond Greer & Norma Dawson (eds), Mysteries and solutions in Irish legal history (Dublin, 2001), pp. 115-159.
Major Awards
2014: Kone Foundation Senior Fellowship, Tampere University Institute for Advanced Social Research, IASR
2013: The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation research grant at the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies, University of Edinburgh and at New York University
2012: The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation research grant at the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies, University of Edinburgh
2009: Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship at NUI, Maynooth
2009: Fulbright Scholar Award in the Humanities at New York University
2009: Fulbright Scholar Award in Irish Historical Studies at Stanford University
2007: Ireland Canada University Foundation Research Scholarship at the University of Toronto
1999: Recipient of the first postgraduate scholarship in Irish legal history from the Irish Legal History Society
Current research
My current research involves a study of the incidence and prosecution of violence involving migrants in Scotland, Canada and the United States of America. This research is based on local studies of violence and the law in major cities in nineteenth-century North America (New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Toronto) and in rural and industrial regions of the US and Canada as well as cities and industrial areas in Scotland, particularly in Glasgow.
Research interests
Modern Irish history
The Irish in Scotland and North America
The history of violence in Europe and North America
Legal history
The history of migration
