Tom Garvin is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for British-Irish studies and was Professor of Politics at University College Dublin (1991-2008). His books include: Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland (1987), 1922: the birth of Irish democracy (1996), Preventing the future: why was Ireland so poor for so long? (2004), and The evolution of Irish nationalist politics (2005). He was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2003.