Dr Andrew Sneddon

Overview

Dr Andrew Sneddon is an historian of early modern and modern social and cultural history. A graduate of University of St Andrews and Lancaster University, he previously worked as a curator at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, did his post-doctoral work at Queen's University, Belfast, and taught at the University of Glasgow.

He joined Ulster University's History team in 2009 where he teaches British and Irish history in a global context (from undergraduate to PhD level). He has also been external examiner for numerous programmes at other Universities, including the University of Limerick.

Dr Sneddon's latest, ground-breaking research explores heritage, memory, disability, medicine, gender, witchcraft, magic and the supernatural in a comparative framework, from later medieval times to the modern period. He has written seven books on these subjects and his numerous academic articles, essays and chapters in edited books have been published in leading peer reviewed journals and by publishers such as Cambridge University Press, Routledge, Palgrave, Bloomsbury and Oxford University Press. He has co-written and co-produced video games, graphic novels, virtual reality experiences, animated films, museum exhibitions and plays.

He has received, as both Principal and Co-Investigator, research grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Leverhulme Trust, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Wellcome Trust, the Lottery Heritage Fund, the Ulster Scots Broadcast Fund, and the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure. In 2025, he was awarded a prestigious Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship for a year to work on a project on disability and the supernatural in the early modern world. Between 2019 and 2025, Dr Sneddon led, with Dr Victoria McCollum (Cinematic Arts), the 'Islandmagee Witches 1711 Digital and Creative' project funded by the IAA/AHRC, Connected NI, and Ulster University.

Dr Sneddon’s research has won numerous international awards and prizes, and he has disseminated it all over the world through conference papers, workshops, invited talks and visiting fellowships. He is committed to civic engagement, outreach, and impactful public history and has designed and delivered numerous public exhibitions, workshops, and talks.

He has also consulted on and contributed to a wide range of blogs, podcasts, television and radio programmes (BBC, RTE, TG4, ITV, Disney), and written for national theatres and leading newspapers and magazines. He was a sole contributor to an internationally excellent rated Impact Case Study for REF2021.

He is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College and the Royal College of Physicians Library committee. A previous president of Ulster Society of Irish Historical Studies he is currently joint editor of Q1 rated journal, Irish Historical Studies.