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In January 2008, Dr. Rory T. Cornish, Professor of History, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London.  Founded in 1868, and given a royal charter by Queen Victoria, the Society remains the foremost professional organization in Britain dedicated to both promoting and defending the scholarly study of the past.  For election a candidate has to be recommended and deemed to have made an original contribution to historical scholarship by its Council, presently presided over by Professor Martin Daunton, the Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.  At present there are nearly 3,000 world-wide members of the Society, though there are only 150 American Fellows, and only 8 of these (including Dr. Cornish) are attached to universities in the Carolinas.

            Dr. Cornish joined the Winthrop faculty in 2002, and in the last five years has delivered six papers at either national, regional or state conferences; he was co-program chair for the Southern Regional American Conference on Irish Studies hosted at Winthrop University in March 2007.  In October 2004, he delivered the dedication address celebrating a new statue to Thomas Frances Meagher in his birthplace, Waterford, Ireland.  The author of two books, he has been a contributor to 11 other publications, including The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), he is presently working on a study of Lord Shelburne and America, 1763-1783, and a biography of the Irish born Confederate General, Joseph Finegan.