Robert Anthony Welch

Robert Anthony Welch
Born	25 November 1947 Cork, County Cork, Ireland
Died	3 February 2013
Occupation	Playwright, poet, author, academic
Nationality	Irish
Genre	Drama, fictional prose, reference

Robert Anthony Welch (25 November 1947 – 3 February 2013) was an Irish author and scholar.

Robert Anthony Welch was Emeritus Professor of English in the Faculty of Arts (BA, MA, PhD, MRIA), and former Dean of the Faculty at the University of Ulster. He joined the University in 1984 as Professor of English and head of the School of English, Media, and Theatre Studies having previously taught at the School of English, University of Leeds, and the University of Ife in Nigeria.

He was born in Cork, Ireland, and was educated at University College Cork and later the University of Leeds. He was a scholarship student at Cork, where he studied English, Irish, and Music. At Cork he was taught by Sean Lucy, Seán Ó Tuama and Sean Ó Riada. He took his Master's at Cork University under Sean Lucy and then went to study for his PhD under the noted Yeats scholar A N Jeffares at Leeds University, where he also held a Lectureship in English. His research was on the interaction between Gaelic tradition and Irish poetry in English, a field in which he achieved wide recognition and which was given special mention in the citation that led to his election to membership of the Royal Irish Academy in 2008.

He was married to Angela O'Riordan and they had four children. A novelist and poet as well as a critic and editor, he published The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature in 1996, a book which appeared on the No. 1 best sellers list.

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