The funeral of the well known academic and historian Gabriel Doherty will take place tomorrow, Friday November 15th, at St. Columba’s Church in Douglas, County Cork. Mr. Doherty died unexpectedly last Friday, November 8th at the age of 56.
A well-known figure in academic circles, Mr. Doherty was a lecturer in University College Cork, where University President John O’Halloran said Mr Doherty’s loss will be “deeply felt in our community.”
“Gabriel was an outstanding historian who deepened our understanding of key moments in Irish history,” he said.
In the aftermath of his death, Tánaiste Micheál Martin said he was “shocked and very saddened to hear of Gabriel’s passing”.
“He was an outstanding historian based in UCC where he did tremendous work on the War of Independence and Civil War,” Mr Martin said.
Born in 1967 in Birmingham into a working-class Irish emigrant family, Doherty’s father was a trade unionist and fostered in him a strong sense of republicanism and social justice. He also developed a strong attachment to his mother’s home county of Roscommon, and was known to take delight in that county’s rare GAA successes.
An outstanding sportsman in his youth, Mr. Doherty had won a “blue” – the most prestigious sporting award – for boxing at the University of Oxford, where he studied.
He went on the be a very popular lecturer, and a historian of considerable repute. He played a significant role in Ireland’s “decade of centenaries” commemorating the wars of independence and the civil war. He served as UCC’s representative on the national committee spearheading the commemorations.
He had edited two books – De Valera’s Ireland and 1916 – the Long Revolution.
An expert on Ireland’s revolutionary period who was always fearless in the face of criticism, he drew the ire of some campaigners in 2020 when he waded into the debate around Ireland and slavery, writing for Gript Media that claims of systemic Irish involvement in the Slave Trade were “utterly misleading in their general thrust, in several ways, for different reasons.”
Away from his work, Doherty was a strong and involved member of his community, well known for his outreach work with local schools, and a committed volunteer in his local church, tidy towns committee, and for volunteering to help refugees and children with special needs.
On behalf of all of us at Gript Media, our most sincere condolences to his wife Gillian, and his three children, Méabh, Oscar, and Una, as well as to all of those who knew and loved him.
May he rest in peace.