Miriam Nyhan

Miriam Nyhan

Assistant Professor & Faculty Fellow

at Glucksman Ireland House NYU

Age: 33

Place of Birth: Arklow, Co. Wicklow

Where you live: Williamsburg, Brooklyn

First Job: Summer job in a newspaper and sweet shop across the street from my home when I was about 14 years of age.

What it taught me: There are no free lunches in life – my father’s refrain.

Status: Single

Family: Engaged to be married in August 2011

Three things people would be surprised to know about me:

1. I did not study history for my Leaving Certificate Examination and ended up doing a PhD. in History!

2. I dropped out of Trinity College Dublin after one year and my parents feared I would never return to college life. How wrong were they?!

3. I met my fiance on the subway.

Best advice you could give someone starting out: Do what you love.

Miriam Nyhan was raised in County Wicklow by a Laois mother and a Cork father, and is the eldest of three girls. Having done her BA and M Phil at Univeristy College Cork, in 2004 she was awarded a scholarship to undertake her PhD. at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy.

In 2006 she came to New York University as part of an exchange scholarship to study under her mentor, Professor Joe Lee. Having completed her PhD she took up a position as Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow at Glucksman Ireland House, New York University.

Miriam is very passionate about Irish history and the history of the Irish diaspora. Her masters thesis, a history of the Ford plant in Cork, was published in 2007 under the title ‘Are You Still Below? The Ford Marina Plant, Cork, 1917-1984’.

She recently curated, with Dr Marion R Casey, an exhibit on county societies in New York. Miriam says she has the best parents in the world.