Born and raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Dr. Townend is a first generation American; his mother grew up in Cork, Ireland, and his father in Yorkshire in England. His interest in history was nurtured by climbing around ruined castles on family visits to the British Isles. As an undergraduate, he studied abroad in Ireland and in Geneva, Switzerland, while majoring in history and minoring in international studies. After his undergraduate degree, he lived in Belfast, Northern Ireland, as a Watson Foundation Fellow for a year, studying peace and reconciliation work and the Troubles. He worked as a paralegal in New York city and Chicago after college before earning his Ph.D. in British and Irish History. He came to UNCW in 2001 and is proud to have served UNCW as faculty, department chair (2009-16), and in administrative roles including Dean of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Vice Chancellor (2016-2021), and as an inaugural Associate Dean in The College of Humanities, Social Sciences and the Arts. He has led study abroad experiences for UNCW students in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Wales. He and his wife have three children and more cats than is quite right.
Paul A. Townend
Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Student Success and Policy – College of Humanities, Social Sciences and the Arts
Bear Hall
Email
Biography
- Thomas Watson Foundation Fellow, 1989–1990
- Thomas Mellon Dissertation Fellow
- James Donnelly Prize (ACIS’s Best Book in the Social Sciences for Father Mathew), 2002
Dr. Townend remains engaged with questions of alcohol and history, social movements, populism’s influence over politics, Irish Catholicism, and the Anglo-Irish relationship. Current research engages with the development of rights discourse within the British Empire, and the cosmopolitan careers of Irish-connected anti-imperialist activists.
- B.A. in History from Colgate University
- MA in History from the University of Chicago
- Ph.D. in History (with distinction) from the University of Chicago
- His first book, “Father Mathew, Temperance and Irish Identity” (Irish Academic Press, 2001), examined the world’s most successful popular temperance movement, which took Ireland by storm in the 1830s and1840s and led half the country to abandon their passion for whisky for a time in the service of self-improvement and patriotism. Other articles have explored the Irish relationship to alcohol, the career and impact of Father Mathew, and the development of Irish nationalism in the 19th Century.
- A second book, “The Road to Home Rule: Anti-Imperialism and the Irish National Movement” (University of Wisconsin Press; History of Ireland and the Irish Diaspora Series, 2016), and a collection of essays he co-edited with Michael De Nie and Timothy McMahon, “Ireland in an Imperial World: Citizenship, Opportunism and Subversion” (Palgrave’s Cambridge Imperialism and Post-Colonial Studies Series, 2017), explored the development of anti-imperialism within Irish nationalism and Ireland’s place in the British imperial system. He has published articles on these topics in Past and Present, Catholic Historical Review, Eire/Ireland, and New Hibernia Review, among other places.