Donald MacRaild, a historian known for his groundbreaking work on Irish migration and labour history, has died suddenly at the age of 60 after a short illness.
Career across the UK and New Zealand
Over a three-decade career, MacRaild held posts at the universities of Sunderland, Northumbria, Ulster, Roehampton, Victoria University of Wellington, and London Metropolitan University, where he served as pro-vice-chancellor for research and innovation before retiring in 2025. He also held honorary fellowships at the University of Edinburgh and Ulster University.
According to a colleague, MacRaild was “peripatetic,” like many of the people he studied, building circles of collaborators at each institution, reinvigorating history and humanities departments, and leaving lasting marks on those who worked alongside him. Advancing social inclusion was the hallmark of everything he did.
Research and publications
MacRaild produced groundbreaking research on Irish Catholic and Protestant immigration, authoring books on the Irish in Britain, the Orange Order in Victorian and Edwardian England, and the English diaspora in North America. His other great intellectual passion was labour history, shaped by a deep admiration for historian E.P. Thompson, whose The Making of the English Working Class (1963) he could quote like poetry.
With David Martin, he co-authored Labour in British Society, 1830–1914 (2000), and with Kyle Hughes, a study of the secret agrarian Ribbon societies in 19th-century Ireland, which he considered his finest work for the depth of its archival research. His last two books, on the great Irish famine and Irish pauperism in 19th-century Britain, appeared in 2023 and 2024 to deserved acclaim.
His most widely read work remains Studying History (2000), co-written with Jeremy Black, which has run to numerous editions and become a staple of undergraduate skills courses, showcasing MacRaild’s rare ability to explain both the theory and method of history at university level.
Early life and education
Born in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, to Wendy (née Ward) and Neil MacRaild, a pharmaceutical worker, Don attended Barrow Grammar School and Parkview Schools before earning a history degree from Liverpool Polytechnic (now Liverpool John Moores University) in 1989. He completed a PhD at the University of Sheffield in 1993, with a thesis on Irish migrants in North Lancashire and Cumberland, becoming part of the “Sheffield school” of academics focusing on British immigration and ethnic history.
His thesis grew into his first book, and what followed was, as a colleague once put it, “enough to make the rest of us look bad”: 18 books, co-authored or edited, and nearly 50 articles and chapters.
Teaching and mentoring
During the early part of his career at Sunderland and Northumbria, MacRaild was also a part-time tutor at the Open University. He was an exceptional PhD supervisor, a master at forging research collaborations, winning grants, and mentoring colleagues at every stage of their careers. He was celebrated for his kindness, candour, and convivial company.
Personal life and legacy
On his retirement, MacRaild returned to his native Cumbria with his second wife, Connie (née Haag), a journalist, whom he married in 2020. She survives him, as do his children, Michael, Katie, and Andrew, from his first marriage to Lisa Bowler, which ended in divorce; his sister, Margaret; and his mother, Wendy.
