Kilkenny native receives one of France's highest academic awards
Conahy man's huge honour
A Kilkenny born historian who was a professor at The University of Manchester for over thirty years has been awarded the prestigious title of Doctor of Letters (Honoris causa) by the Sorbonne University in Paris, becoming one of the first honorary graduates of the famous institution for several decades.
The title was awarded to Conahy man, Professor Emeritus Joseph Bergin for his life’s work in research and publications on the history of early modern France.
Born in Rathkyle, on the border of Conahy and Ballyragget parishes, to Con and Bridget Bergin in 1948, he was educated at Byrnesgrove National School and Rockwell College before securing his BA and MA in Arts at UCD in 1970 and 1972 respectively, and later graduating with a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Cambridge in 1977.
He was on the staff of NUI Maynooth for two years before joining the Department of History at Manchester in 1978, becoming Professor in 1996.
He specialises in early modern France, and especially in the political, religious and social history of the seventeenth century, on which he has written seven important works including biographies of Richelieu and the definitive Church, Society and Religious Change in France 1580-1730.
He has also been an active translator of books and articles in history from French to English. One such translation, The Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, won the American Historical Association's Russell Major prize in 2014.
He has spent several extended periods in France either for research purposes or as a visiting professor at universities from Paris and Nancy to Lyon and Montpellier
He received the Sorbonne's Richelieu medal in 2011 on his retirement from his full-time position, in the same year as he was elected as a foreign member of the renowned French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres.
He also once played rugby (as outside-half) for the Paris rugby club Stade Francais, which proved an unusually interesting entree for him into many things French.
He is a regular visitor to his native place, where his brother Larry continues to farm, and also to other family locations, including Callan, where a sister lives. He is married to Sylvia Papazian, of French (and Armenian) background, and they have two adult children, a journalist and an environmental engineer, who are fully bi-lingual.
He is not however the only distinguished Kilkenny native with connections to the University of Manchester. Professor Andrew Renehan, son of the late Liam and Margaret Renehan, of Kilkenny city, is Professor of Cancer Studies and Surgery at the University's Institute of Cancer Sciences.