Thomas Christopher Garvin (7 July 1943 – 17 October 2024) was an Irish

political scientist Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

and historian. He was Professor Emeritus of Politics at

University College Dublin University College Dublin (), commonly referred to as UCD, is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a collegiate university, member institution of the National University of Ireland. With 38,417 students, it is Ireland's largest ...

. Garvin was an alumnus of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in

Washington, DC Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...

Life and career

Garvin was a graduate of UCD with a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

degree in history and politics and a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have ...

degree in politics. His

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

degree was awarded by the

University of Georgia The University of Georgia (UGA or Georgia) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia, United States. Chartered in 1785, it is the oldest public university in th ...

in 1974 for his thesis ''Political Parties in a Dublin Constituency: A Behavioural Analysis''. He was a central figure in establishing the Political Studies Association of Ireland in 1982, and his professional reputation saw him win promotion in UCD, where he became

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

of Politics in 1991. In that capacity, he also served as Head of Department until 2005. His academic career was marked by sabbaticals in the USA (where he spent extended periods at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington DC; Colgate University; Mount Holyoke College; the University of Georgia; and, as Burns Professor,

Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private university, private Catholic Jesuits, Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1863 by the Society of Jesus, a Catholic Religious order (Catholic), religious order, t ...

). He was elected as a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2003. Garvin's academic output included 60 articles in journals, chapters in books, and publications of similar type; six books, with a further two forthcoming; two edited volumes; and a range of publications of other kinds. The best-known of his books formed a sequence dealing with successive themes in the emergence of modern Ireland: "''The evolution of Irish nationalist politics''" (1981, 1983); "''Nationalist revolutionaries in Ireland 1858-1928''" (1987); "''1922: the birth of Irish democracy''" (1996); and "''Preventing the future: why was Ireland so poor for so long''" (2004). Garvin retired on 1 September 2008 after working for 41 years in what became the UCD School of Politics and International Relations. He died on 17 October 2024.

Publications

* ''The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics'' * ''Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland'' * ''1922: The Birth of Irish Democracy'' * ''Preventing the Future: Why was Ireland So Poor for So Long?'' * ''Judging Lemass'' * ''News from a New Republic: Ireland in the 1950s'' * ''The Books that Define Ireland'' (with Bryan Fanning) * ''The Lives of Daniel Binchy: Irish Scholar, Diplomat, Public Intellectual''

References

External links

*
Garvin's UCD site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Garvin, Tom 1943 births 2024 deaths 20th-century Irish historians 21st-century Irish historians Irish political scientists University of Georgia alumni Members of the Royal Irish Academy Academics of University College Dublin