Paula Murphy is an emeritus professor in the School of Art History and Cultural Policy, University College Dublin, where sculpture has been the focus of her research. Her publications include Nineteenth-century Irish sculpture: native genius reaffirmed (2010) and Sculpture 1600-2000, vol. 3 in Art and architecture of Ireland (2014). She was a recipient of the RHA Gold Medal in 2015. In 2016/17 she held a Terra Foundation Senior Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in Washington DC. She has served on the Board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Sculptors' Society of Ireland (now Visual Artists Ireland), and was a member of the Steering Group of Dublin City Council's Sculpture Dublin (2020-22). Her most recent publication is Art History at the Crossroads of Ireland and the United States (2022), co-edited with Cynthia Fowler.