The School of History & Cork University Press co-hosted a very special event in the Aula Maxima on 12 December 2025, to celebrate the academic legacy of the late Professor Dermot Keogh, a highly distinguished historian and former head of the History Department in UCC. The Inaugural Dermot Keogh Memorial Lecture was given by An Taoiseach Micheál Martin, one of Dermot's former students.

The School of History at University College Cork is pleased to host the First Chris Williams Memorial Colloquium on Ireland and Wales, an initiative of the School of History and the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, on Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd November 2025 (O’Rahilly Building, Room G27). This year’s theme, Gerald of Wales: Identity, Afterlives and Wonders, brings together scholars exploring the many dimensions of the twelfth-century Cambro-Norman cleric and writer Giraldus Cambrensis (c. 1146–1223). Gerald’s connection to Ireland lies in his family’s central role in the Anglo-Norman invasion and settlement of the country, and his writings on Ireland, namely the Expugnatio Hibernica and Topographia Hibernica.

Kenneth Nicholls (1934-2025) was Statutory Lecturer in the Department (now School) of History at University College Cork from his appointment in 1974 until his retirement in 2005. Widely regarded as one of the greatest scholars of his generation, as a teacher he ranged broadly through time and space, offering undergraduates a magical carpet-ride of Irish, British, European and even Asian History from the Middle Ages to the Demographic Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Though some students could find the journey challenging, tugging away at old orthodoxies, many found it inspiring and revelatory. No other lecturer demonstrated such a range or depth of knowledge. On his best days his classes could be spellbinding. They were never dull.