About

Draft text for David to rewrite in his own words.

I’m David Mulrooney. I studied English at Trinity College Dublin and went on to a PhD at Harvard. For more than twenty years my work has been about reading documents closely and writing clearly about what they show: first as a researcher, including several years in Beijing at a Swedish think tank, and since 2019 as an independent editor of scholarly and policy publications.

In 2026 I set out to reconstruct my own family’s history properly, from the records rather than from the stories. That work took me through civil registers in Limerick and Cork, Catholic parish books in Clare and Wexford, constabulary and navy service records, petty sessions courts and nineteenth-century newspapers, and as far as parish registers in the Azores. Along the way I built a way of working that I now offer to others:

• every fact is tied to a record, and every record is transcribed;
• conflicting evidence is set out openly, not quietly resolved;
• a likely identification is labelled as likely, never presented as proven.

I work remotely from Vienna, using the Irish record collections that are now online. Where a record can only be seen in a Dublin or Belfast reading room, I will tell you, and arrange for it to be consulted.

How I use technology

I use software, including AI tools, to help with transcription, organising large numbers of records and drafting. Every finding is checked against the original record image, and I take responsibility for everything in my reports.

Memberships

To add: genealogy memberships (for example APG) once joined.

Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP).