Academic biography

Donnacha Ó Beacháin is Professor of Politics at the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University (DCU) where he lectures on post-Soviet politics, unrecognised states, Irish studies and foreign policy. 

Professor Ó Beacháin has twice been awarded the accolade “Champion of European Research” by Ireland’s National Support Network for FP7 and Horizon2020. The citations read that ‘as leaders of major research projects in the EU Framework Programme for Research and Development [these] researchers … are deemed to have reached the pinnacle of the European Research System’.

He has conducted research in all fifteen recognised post-Soviet UN member states and in each of the protracted conflict zones.

Professor Ó Beacháin was has been a core member or principal investigator in several multimillion euro EU-funded projects. He is also currently a core team member of a €1million research project devoted to the “dynamics of de facto state patron-client relations”, which is funded by the Research Council of Norway.      

Professor Ó Beacháin’s monograph is From Partition to Brexit: The Irish Government and Northern Ireland (Manchester University Press) which was the 2019 recipient of the Political Studies Association of Ireland's Brian Farrell prize for book of the year.

Other books include The Colour Revolutions in the Former Soviet Republics: Successes and Failures (with Abel Polese, Routledge, 2010), Destiny of the Soldiers: Fianna Fáil, Irish Republicanism and the IRA 1926-1973, (Gill and Macmillan, 2010), Life in Post-Communist Eastern Europe after EU Membership: Happy Ever After? (with Vera Sheridan and Sabina Stan, Routledge, 2012), Political Communication in Ireland (with Mark O'Brien, Liverpool University Press 2014) and From Whence I Came: The Kennedy Legacy, Ireland and America (with Brian Murphy, Merrion Press, 2021)