Short Biography
Professor Pat Wallace KD, MRIA, FSA, Hon. MRIAI has served as Director of the National Museum of Ireland since 1988. Prior to this appointment he worked in the Antiquities Division of the Museum and was the archaeologist in charge of the Museum’s excavations at Wood Quay/Fishamble Street in Dublin. These were the largest Viking age urban excavations ever undertaken in Western or Northern Europe. His work as an archaeologist of the Viking age and of urbanism has earned an international reputation.
Professor Wallace’s academic publications centre mainly on the early-medieval urban archaeology of Dublin, covering its buildings, docksides, timber construction, urban layouts, iron and lead corpuses as well as international trade. He has written two monographs (The Viking Age Buildings of Dublin and Weights and Balances in Viking Dublin), edited several books, published dozens of articles and have also made many contributions on local and economic history and on rural life as well as more popular publications on historical and archaeological subjects. Dr Wallace has lectured all over the world, most notably at the National Geographic in Washington and have given the Dalrymple Lectures at Glasgow University. He has lectured mainly on the Museum’s collections and on the rich results from Viking and Anglo-Norman Dublin to conferences in Ireland, Britain, Scandinavia and Continental Europe, Canada, China and the US.He is well known in Ireland for his popularisation of historical, archaeological and heritage subjects on radio and television
Dr Wallace is a of the Society of Antiquaries of London, Membership of the Royal Irish Academy and an honorary doctorate from the University of Roskilde, Denmark. He has been a member of both the Birka (Sweden) and Kaupang (Norway) reference committees and was made a Knight of the Dannebrog by Her Majesty, the Queen of Denmark.He was given honorary Membership of the Royal Institute of Architects in Ireland and honorary Citizenship of his native County Limerick by Limerick County Council. In 2006 he was awarded the Alumni Award by NUIG (UCG) for Communications in the Arts.
