New chair of Irish Studies appointed

Dublin-born Prof Sonja Tiernan has been appointed to the University of Otago's Eamon Cleary Chair of Irish Studies.

Prof Tiernan, who is associate professor and head of the history and politics department at Liverpool Hope University, in England, will start at Otago in June.

She said she was excited to take up the Otago post at a ``key time'' for relations between Ireland and New Zealand, and after the reciprocal establishment of respective embassies in Wellington and Dublin last year.

Prof Tiernan succeeds Australian-born Prof Peter Kuch, who took up the inaugural chair in 2006 and retired last month, returning to Sydney.