Kenneth Nicholls
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kenneth W. Nicholls (1934 – 25 May 2025) was an Irish academic and historian, notable for his work on the late medieval and early modern period. He was the subject of a festschrift in 2014.
Nicholls worked at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies for a period during the 1960s. He was a member of staff of the history department in University College Cork until his retirement in 2004.[1] He came to national and international prominence as the author of Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland in the Middle Ages, first published in 1972, and reprinted in 2003.[2] He was particularly regarded among his peers for his deep knowledge of late medieval and early modern historical sources in the Irish, Latin, French and English languages.[3]
Nicholls' areas of professional interests included:[4]
- Late medieval and early modern Ireland, including topics such as genealogy, population studies, place-names, marriage, law, institutions
- Scottish history, particularly legal and institutional
- extinction of animals within historical times
- agrarian history
Death
Nicholls died at Bantry General Hospital on 25 May 2025, at the age of 90.[5][6]
Recognition
His work was honoured in the festschrift Regions and rulers in Ireland, 1100-1650: essays for Kenneth Nicholls (David Edwards, editor; Dublin, 2004), which is a collection of essays by several of the leading Irish historians of today.
