FORMER PRESIDENT MARY McAleese has been appointed a professor in Irish studies at a university in London.
Dr McAleese is joining St Mary’s University in Twickenham, the largest Catholic college in the UK with around 5,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students.
As part of her new role, Dr McAleese will teach on the MA in Irish Studies course, give a keynote lecture, and take part in a programme of public conversations.
She will take up her position in the academic year beginning September 2015.
Dr McAleese, who served as president of Ireland between 1997 and 2011, said she was “delighted” to join St Mary’s and meet students and staff at the university.
“I particularly look forward to working closely with the excellent team at [the] Centre for Irish Studies as it researches the continuing development of Anglo-Irish relations,” she said.
Since her term as president ended, Dr McAleese has graduated from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome with a degree in canon law and she is currently completing a doctorate on the subject.
Before becoming president she was an academic, serving as the first female Pro Vice-Chancellor at Queen’s University and the Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College Dublin.
“It’s a huge honour for us to appoint such a distinguished and respected public figure to our staff here at St Mary’s,” the university’s vice-chancellor Francis Campbell said.
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