Niamh Wycherley

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Niamh Wycherley is an Irish medieval historian who studies early Ireland, focusing on St. Brigid and the cult of relics. She teaches at Maynooth University in the history and early Irish studies departments, covering Ireland’s medieval history from the 5th to the 12th centuries.

She earned a BA in history and politics from University College Dublin in 2004, an MA in Medieval Studies in 2007 (with a thesis on Cogitosus’s Vita Sanctae Brigidae under Elva Johnston), and a PhD in 2012 supervised by Charles Doherty at UCD, on the cult of relics in early medieval Ireland. In 2012 she received an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship, mentored by Elva Johnston.

Wycherley’s 2015 book, The Cult of Relics in Early Medieval Ireland, is based on her PhD and IRC research, and she won the NUI Publication Prize in History in 2017 for it. She then held a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Irish/Celtic Studies at NUI and worked at the Moore Institute, NUI Galway with Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, studying terminology related to relic cults from the 5th to the 12th centuries. After leaving the Moore Institute in 2019, she joined Maynooth University as an assistant lecturer and is now an assistant professor of early Irish history.

Wycherley is a member of the Royal Irish Academy’s Young Academy Ireland, was elected to its executive committee in 2023, and served as its first co-chair and then chair from 2023 to 2025. She hosts The Medieval Irish History Podcast, with support from Maynooth’s Department of Early Irish. She contributed to RTÉ’s Finding Brigid (2023) and was a historical consultant for RTÉ’s Blindboy: the Land of Slaves and Scholars (2024). She leads a four-year Research Ireland Pathway project, Power and Patronage in medieval Ireland: Clonard from the 6th to 12th centuries (2022–2026).