He was the Director of the Center for Irish Studies at the University between 1997 and 2001. He worked as a Program Officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities, where he directed the National Conversation on American Pluralism and Identity, and he has taught history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His foci of teaching and research are American immigrant history, the Irish in America and Catholic history. He is a Fellow of CUA's Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies. He received his B.A. from Georgetown University, M.A. from the University of Chicago, and Ph.D. from Brown University.