Patrick Griffin

Biography

Patrick Griffin works on early American history. He does so from global, Atlantic, and British perspectives. He has written on, among other things, empire, revolution, and migration. Much of his work focuses on the American Revolution. He also has examined themes as varied as Irish-America and boxing.

His books include Prizefighter: Yankee Sullivan and the Hands That Made the Modern World (Virginia, 2026); The Age of Atlantic Revolution: The Fall and Rise of a Connected World (Yale, 2023); and The Townshend Moment: The Making of Empire and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (Yale, 2017); America's Revolution (Oxford, 2012); American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (Hill & Wang, 2007); and The People with No Name: Ireland's Ulster Scots, America's Scots Irish, and the Creation of a British Atlantic World (Princeton, 2001).

He is now busy on a study of empire after the American Revolution, by exploring the varied experiences of Charles Cornwallis in America, India, and Ireland. Griffin served as chair of the History Department and then as director of the Keough-Naughton Institute. In that role, he helped create the ARINS Project (Analyzing and Researching Ireland, North and South). Griffin is an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and an Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh. He has served as Harmsworth Professor of American History at the University of Oxford. He is now Bye-Fellow at St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge.