Prof. Barr is the author or editor of a number of books, including ‘Ireland’s Empire: The Roman Catholic Church in the English-speaking World, 1829-1914’ (Cambridge University Press, 2020). ‘The Irish Pope: Paul Cullen, 1803-1878’, will be published by Cambridge University Press shortly.
Justin Arbuthnott Lecture 2026
June 4 @ 5:15 pm - 6:30 pm
FREE
This year’s Arbuthnott Lecture will be given by Professor Colin Barr (University of Notre Dame). It is titled ‘Ireland’s Pope: Cardinal Paul Cullen and the making of Irish Catholicism’.
It takes place on Thursday 4 June 2026 at 5:15pm in the Teviot Lecture Theatre, Doorway 5, Old Medical School, Teviot Place, Edinburgh EH8 9AG. Free entry.
Prof. Barr’s work seeks to place the history of the island of Ireland and its peoples in the widest possible context, including that of the United Kingdom, Europe, the Roman Catholic Church, and the global Irish Diaspora.
The Justin Arbuthnott Trust was founded by friends and family of Justin Arbuthnott, an Edinburgh University History student who was drowned along with three friends one night in July 1989 when their boat capsized off the coast near County Donegal in Ireland. It provides a postgraduate scholarship each year and this lecture, both of which are designed to promote the better understanding of Ireland and various complex relationships which link Ireland and and various complex relationships which link Ireland and Britain.
Previous lectures have been given by Professor Diarmaid Ferriter MRIA (University College Dublin), Adrian O’Neill, Ireland’s Ambassador to the UK, Professor Mary E. Daly on ‘Independence and sovereignty – rhetoric and reality; the Irish story’, and Professor Tom Bartlett on ‘The Irish at war – and some of their historians’.
This event is organised by the University of Edinburgh.
