Declan Kiberd

Early life and education

Kiberd was born in Dublin and went to Belgrove Primary School, where he was taught by the distinguished novelist John McGahern, before moving to St. Paul's College, Raheny. He is the brother of journalist Damien Kiberd. In 1969, he won an award to study Irish and English at Trinity College, Dublin, where he got a double first and a Gold Medal. He then went to Linacre College, Oxford where he took a DPhil under the late Richard Ellmann, the biographer of James Joyce, Oscar Wilde and W. B. Yeats.

Academic career

Kiberd is the Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies and professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. Before this he held the Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at University College, Dublin until 2011. He joined UCD as lecturer in Anglo-Irish literature in 1979. He taught English previously in the University of Kent at Canterbury (1976–77), and Irish in Trinity College Dublin (1977–79). He was appointed Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at UCD in 1997.

He has also been Director of the Yeats International Summer School (1985–87), patron of the Dublin Shaw Society (1995–2000), a columnist with The Irish Times (1985–87) and The Irish Press (1987–93), the presenter of the RTÉ arts programme, Exhibit A (1984–86), and a regular essayist and reviewer in The Irish Times, The Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books and The New York Times.

Other works of note

In 1987 he co-edited Omnium Gatherum: Essays for Richard Ellmann, which had been intended as a festschrift for Richard Ellmann, but became a memoriam when Ellmann died the same year.

Another publication of note is Irish Classics, which was awarded the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in 2002.

Kiberd also wrote the introduction to the Penguin Classic Annotated Student's Edition of Ulysses, which re-released the Bodley Head/Random House text of 1960/1961.

In 2009, Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living was published by Faber and Faber. It argues that Ulysses is a work of popular fiction, always intended for a mass readership, and examines how Joyce's modernist masterpiece reflects and satirises aspects of daily life.

In 2015, Handbook of the Irish Revival: An Anthology of Irish Cultural and Political Writings 1891-1922 was published by Abbey Theatre Press. The anthology, which Kiberd co-edited with P.J. Matthews, was the subject of a speech given by Irish President Michael D. Higgins.

Research supervision and interests

Kiberd has supervised many PhD candidates whose theses have later been published as monographs, including Stanley Van Der Ziel, Malcolm Sen, and Jarlath Killeen.

His own research interests are primarily Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama, in particular Joyce and Synge, Post-colonial theory, and Children's Literature; which he introduced to the UCD curriculum in 2008. He is currently working on a short monograph on Beckett.

Kiberd serves on the advisory board of the International Review of Irish Culture which describes itself as influenced by the critical theory developed by the neo-Marxist intellectuals of the Frankfurt School.

Publications

Books:

Edited:

Pamphlets:

Scripts written:

Public roles

In addition to Books' Prizes listed above, received President's Award for 1998-9 and Government of Ireland Senior Research Fellowship 2003-4.