Dr Patrick J. Houlihan

Assistant Professor of Twentieth-Century European History

Patrick J. Houlihan is Assistant Professor of Twentieth-Century European History. Before taking up his position at Trinity, he was a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. His book, Catholicism and the Great War: Religion and Everyday Life in Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1922 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), was awarded the Fraenkel Prize of the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide. He earned his PhD in History from the University of Chicago, where he trained in modern transnational European and Global History, particularly Germany, Austria-Hungary (and the successor states), and the Vatican. A former visiting fellow at the British School at Rome, his research funding also has included grants from the European Academy of Religion, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), the American Philosophical Society, the Cushwa Center (University of Notre Dame), and the Fulbright Program. His research interests include war and ideology in European and Global History from the American Revolution to the present.

His most recent book is Religious Humanitarianism during the World Wars, 1914-1945: Between Atheism and Messianism (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Patrick is a consulting professor for the group, "The Global Pontificate of Pius XII: Catholicism in a Divided World, 1945-1958," which is exploring the newly opened Vatican archives of Pope Pius XII (1939-1958): https://piusxii.hypotheses.org/associated-researchers

Teaching

Patrick’s undergraduate teaching includes a List 2 module, “German Empires at War, 1914-1945,” a List 1 module, "Fascism, 1914-Present," and he co-teaches the Senior Fresh module on 20th Century European History. At the graduate level, he teaches an MPhil Option on “Humanitarianism and Human Rights in 20th Century Europe,” and he also contributes to MPhil Core Options. He also supervises topics in European and Global History relating to modern war, peace, and ideology, and he welcomes inquiries from prospective students (BA, MPhil, PhD, Postdoc.) researching in these areas.

Publications

Book:

Religious Humanitarianism during the World Wars, 1914-1945: Between Atheism and Messianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024)
Catholicism and the Great War: Religion and Everyday Life in Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)

Articles and Chapters:

“Renovating Christian Charity: Global Catholicism, the Save the Children Fund, and Humanitarianism during the First World War,” Past & Present 250, no. 1 (February 2021): 203–241 https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtaa010
“Rimodellare i confini: l’Europa e le colonie nella Note di pace di Benedetto XV/ Reshaping Borders: Europe and the Colonies in the 1917 Peace Note,” in Alberto Melloni, ed., Benedetto XV. Papa Giacomo Della Chiesa nel mondo dell’ ‘inutile Strage’/ Benedict XV. Pope Giacomo Della Chiesa in a World of “Useless Slaughter,” vol. 1, pp. 344-351 (Bologna: Mulino, 2017)
“Global Catholicism’s Crusade against Communism, 1917-1963,” in Stefan Rinke and Michael Wildt, eds., Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions: 1917 and Its Aftermath from a Global Perspective, pp. 103-118 (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2017)
“The Churches,” in 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2015-10-22. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15463/ie1418.10747
“Religious Mobilization and Popular Belief,” in 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2015-08-26. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15463/ie1418.10716
“Imperial Frameworks of Religion: Catholic Military Chaplains of Germany and Austria-Hungary during the First World War” First World War Studies 3, no. 2 (2012): 165-82.
“Local Catholicism as Transnational War Experience: Everyday Religious Practice in Occupied Northern France, 1914-1918” Central European History 45, no. 2 (June 2012): 233-67.