Charles Doherty is a graduate of St. Columb’s College in Derry.  He received his MA from University College Dublin. He joined the Department of Early (including medieval) Irish History in UCD in 1972. He retired as statutory lecturer from the School of History and Archives in 2012. In 2012–13 he spent a year on a project in the Centre for Advanced Study in the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo. He served as president of the Group for the Study of Irish Historic Settlement 2006–09; and secretary, and later as president of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland from 2009–13. He has published on economic history, the cults of St Patrick and St Brigit (and hagiography in general), on the kingship of Tara and most recently on the mythology of Lough Ree. He has co-edited with Linda Doran and Mary Kelly, Glendalough: City of God (Four Courts Press: Dublin, 2011), with Mary Kelly, Music and the Stars: mathematics in medieval Ireland (Four Courts Press: Dublin, 2013), and with Jan Erik Rekdal, Kings and warriors in early north west Europe, (Four Courts Press: Dublin, 2016). His current research is on the cult of  Patrick and on the relationship of the kingship of Tara to international kingship