Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre

Professor of History, Trinity College
Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre is the chair of the Trinity College Department of History and a historian of modern Britain, Ireland, and British imperialism. She is the author of Imperial Wine: The British Empire and the Making of Wine's New World (University of California Press, April 2022), which won the André Simon Award. Her work combines political, economic, and cultural approaches, and puts wine history in dialogue with colonial history. She is currently co-editing the six-volume Bloomsbury Cultural History of Wine, with Charles Ludington. She is President of the Northeast Conference of British Studies.

Regan-Lefebvre's earlier work investigated the experience of the Irish in the British Empire, and particularly the intersections of nationalism, imperialism, and colonialism. Her first book was a biography of the Irish Quaker nationalist, and president of the 1894 Indian National Congress, Alfred Webb. Cosmopolitan Nationalism in the Victorian Empire revealed a strain of Irish nationalism that was globally-minded, civic, and committed to imperial reform. She also edited and published the memoirs of J. F. X. O'Brien, revealing his radical engagements in France, New Orleans, and Nicaragua before his entry into Fenian politics.

Regan-Lefebvre teaches widely across British and world history and enjoys developing new classes to stimulate students' interest in the past and to build their skills as historians and communicators. Her classes include an introductory British history survey, seminars on British cultural history, wine history, Irish history, and historical networks, and an experiential course in parliamentary debate. She has been particularly proud to supervise a number of senior thesis writers in undertaking archival research in the UK. Her former Trinity research students have gone on to pursue graduate degrees in history at Cambridge, Yale, and Carnegie Mellon.

Regan-Lefebvre has also written for Decanter and VinePair, and worked as a historical consultant for heritage and wine organizations. She teaches a free, open, online course on the history of wine, available through Trinity EdX. For her scholarship and educational impact, Regan-Lefebvre was named one of the "Future 50" of the global wine industry by the Wine and Spirits Education Trust and the International Wine and Spirits Competition in 2019. She holds a WSET Level 3 Award in Wine.