The job prospects right now in history as a discipline are generally pretty dire in the United States, which is the biggest academic job market overall in the world. The badness comes in several layers. The first is that overall in the US market, many academic institutions have moved increasingly towards a very exploitative model of academic labor, which is hiring people on short-term 'contingent' contracts that are often very poorly paid and frequently have no benefits. The second is that history enrollments are significantly down and many departments are losing positions (contingent or tenure-track).

In that environment, many smaller departments are having to prioritize fields that they think will retain student interest. I suspect medieval European history will be one of the fields that smaller departments consider eliminating when someone retires, though the depth of the historiography in the field makes it attractive in many respects and it can draw considerable student engagement. Large research-oriented departments will certainly retain one or more medieval history positions, but you just have to keep in mind what that means when a search is open--that the competition is likely to be intense.

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You have to keep in mind also that the US system is quite hierarchical (without people necessarily saying so explicitly) and many of the most attractive jobs at the best resourced institutions will go to people who got their doctorates at comparable institutions. In some fields, there are jobs all up and down the entire span of US higher education (20th Century US history, for example) but in others the opportunities are much more limited. You talk about going to Ireland to do your doctorate: I would think that only Trinity and University College Dublin would be likely to carry much weight among selective private US institutions. You want to think carefully about this. If you want to get your doctorate because you're in love with this field of study AND you're in love with Ireland, then follow your heart. If you want to maximize your chances at a good academic position to follow, knowing that this is an unlikely outcome even if you are the most awesome historian ever, you may have to think in a slightly more coldly pragmatic way.

If you want a job in the UK or Irish university system, that's also complicated--for one by citizenship (especially of all times now) and also because of the way both of those systems now hire and retain faculty in the wake of neoliberal changes in the 1990s/early 2000s. The jobs will be hard to come by and a lot of them are not great, for somewhat different reasons than in the US system.

I would also give some of the general advice I give students thinking about doctorates in history. Prestige of your institution is important. But equally important is reputation in *your field*--an institution that is not necessarily top-ranked across the board but has very strong resources in your specific field can matter a lot. Equally, the individuals you're working with matter. You want to find out, however you can, what the faculty you might work with are actually like as mentors. A person with a strong reputation in your field who is also a monster or prone to sexual harassment or simply unlikely to look out for the prospects of their graduate students is a much worse choice than a person who is less known but a far better mentor and teacher.

If you do want to do this and you are interested in job prospects, I would also encourage you to think about secondary fields than enhance your employability. With medieval Irish history, you will *certainly* want a reasonably strong training in medieval European history generally, but also consider trying to acquire some credentials that qualify you to teach modern Irish history, archaeology, or other plausibly connected fields.

One more bit of advice. In the US system, if you are doing a doctorate in an academic field, you should NOT have to pay tuition and you should expect a stipend. If you are admitted to a program but they do not waive tuition or offer a stipend, think twice and then think again about proceeding--it means the program that admitted you is thinking of you as someone who funds the students they really really want. You can undo that verdict, but why start at such a disadvantage, and at such a cost?

I have worked in several Universities in Ireland and Northern Ireland and my wife currently works in Queens University Belfast. I’m not going to discourage you - I did a PhD, worked in academia for 10years and am now a civil servant with no regrets.

The Irish higher education sector is in a funding crisis so jobs are really scarce. There is a different system to the USA, there is no tenure track, people do short term contracts and post-doctoral work until they get a permanent job.

My advice is to look hard at the universities in Ireland. The key things are who do you want to work with and what is their PhD programme like. Will they offer training in transferable skills (eg digital)? Also are your interested in a topic that might open doors beyond Ireland?

Look at the staff in the Irish Univerities and their research interests, see if anyone works in the are you like and email them to have a chat. Most people will talk informally and if they won’t, I’d leave them alone.