Dr. Paul MacCotter MA, PhD teaches genealogy, family history and medieval history in University College Cork. Since 1993 he has published widely in the fields of genealogy, family history and several branches of Irish medieval history. He has won prestigious research awards, has written four books and nearly sixty journal articles, many of them peer reviewed. He has also contributed to several populist family history and genealogy magazines.
His book, Medieval Ireland: Territorial, Political and Economic divisions (Four Courts Press, 2008), is the standard reference work on the subject. He lectures regularly at family history and academic conferences and seminars. Click here to see a list of Dr. MacCotter’s publications.
My Own Ancestry:
My roots lie very much in Cork City. My ancestors included soldiers, carpenters, bakers, business men, artists, musicians, white smiths, butchers, gardiners and labourers. Some lines I can trace back to the 1850s, others as far as the 1780s. The surnames of my ancestors were MacCotter, Walsh, Brady, Webb, Murphy (two unrelated lines), Healy, O’Rourke, Hegerty, O’Sullivan, Knowles, Desmond and O’Leary. This represents a typical cross section of surnames the majority of which are Gaelic Irish, with some Viking, Anglo-Norman and seventeenth century British names in the mix also.