Padraic Kenney


Padraic Jeremiah Kenney is an American writer, historian, and educator. He was dean of the University of Kentucky's graduate school until May 2025, after which he was placed on paid leave for a year. Previously Kenney was professor of history and International Studies at Indiana University.
Kenney served as an Associate Dean for Social and Historical Sciences and Graduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences at IU. He served a two-year tenure as director of Collins Living-Learning Center from 2018 to 2020. Previously, he was Professor of History at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He graduated from Harvard College, University of Toronto, and the University of Michigan.
He is the author of several books on East European history and politics; his area of specialization is social change and political change in the contemporary world, in particular civil resistance to authoritarian regimes and democratic revolutions. His most recent book, Dance in Chains: Political Imprisonment in the Modern World, examines political prisoners and imprisoning regimes from the mid-19th century, in particular in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Poland, and South Africa, as well as the men detained at Guantanamo Bay. His 2002 work, A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe, 1989, has been translated into Polish, Ukrainian, Romanian, and Czech. A history of post-communism, Burdens of Freedom: Eastern Europe Since 1989, was translated into Croatian and Italian.
In 2016, he was president of the Association for Slavic, [East European, and Eurasian Studies].
He is a frequent contributor to the Polish online weekly Kultura liberalna. Other essays have appeared in The [New York Times], The Boston Globe, and The Denver Post.
He was awarded a grant under the Fulbright Program in 2005.

Selected publications