Robert Dudley Edwards

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Robert Dudley Edwards (sometimes referred to as Robin Dudley Edwards) (1909–88) was an Irish historian.

He was born in Dublin and educated at St. Enda's School and University College Dublin. He carried out postgraduate work at the University of London which resulted in the award of a PhD in 1933, published in 1935 as Church and State in Tudor Ireland. Along with Theo Moody he founded the Irish Historical Society in 1936, and its journal Irish Historical Studies was first published in 1938.

In 1937 he was awarded a DLitt by the National University of Ireland and in 1939 was appointed to a statutory lectureship in Modern Irish History at University College Dublin. He succeeded Mary Hayden to the Chair of Modern Irish History in 1944, which he held until he retired in 1979. His contribution to the discipline of history in Ireland was substantial, and included the setting up of the university archives.

His daughter Ruth Dudley Edwards is an Irish historian, crime novelist, journalist and broadcaster, and his son Owen Dudley Edwards is a historian at the University of Edinburgh.