Academic biography

Kevin Rafter is Full Professor of Political Communication and a specialist in the politics and media of contemporary Ireland. His books include Taoisigh and the Arts (2022), Resilient Reporting: Media & Elections in Ireland since 1969 (2019) and The Irish Presidency: Power, Ceremony & Politics (2014). He is also the author of several political biographies and party histories including The Road to Power: How Fine Gael Made History (2012) and Democratic Left The Life and Death of an Irish Political Party (2011). His forthcoming book Dillon Rediscovered (2025) is a biography of E.J. Dillon (1854-1933), a foreign correspondent at the Daily Telegraph. He is currently working on a study of the politics of Ireland in the 1980s for which he was a Fulbright Scholar at Boston College in 2024. 

Kevin’s contribution to Irish public life includes chairing national bodies and taskforces on civil service reform, broadcast and legal regulation, as well as facilitating government formation negotiations as an independent rapporteur in 2016.  He has chaired the two national bodies responsible for arts and culture in Ireland, the Arts Council and Culture Ireland, and has served as a board member of several other commercial and non-for-profits organisations including Chair of Compliance Committee of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (Media Commission). Kevin has qualifications in economics [BA(Mod; MLitt], politics [MA; PhD] and in corporate law and governance from the Law Society of Ireland. He is a qualified Chartered Director at the Institute of Directors. 

Since joining DCU in 2010, he has been Head of the School of Communications, Associate Dean for Research and Chair of the MA Political Communication programme. He is also the Irish contact for the international Worlds of Journalism project and oversees DCU’s annual journalism scholarship programme at the Washington Bureau of Arizo