Dissertation: Linguistic Change and Cultural Paradigms: The Development of Russian Scholarly Prose (18th-20th Centuries)
Conor returned to Ireland from Berkeley in 1990 and entered the telecommunications business. He has been active in this sector since then – most recently as an independent consultant. He has maintained his active interest in Central and Eastern Europe. Relevant business roles have included: managing a satellite network in the Samara oblast of the Russian Federation; setting up and managing operations for a corporate telecoms provider in Warsaw, Bratislava and Budapest; due diligence on cable television and broadband networks in Estonia on behalf of venture capital firms and banks. He has also been active as a classical music impresario: he presented a series of events in Dublin for the centenary of the birth of Samuel Barber – artists included US baritone Thomas Hampson. He has developed his strong interest in the Irish language (Gaeilge) and is a regular contributor in Irish on Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian current affairs for Ireland’s national Irish-language radio station. Since early 2019 he has been a visiting research fellow in the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at Trinity College Dublin. He is a regular lecturer in the department’s flagship module ‘Introduction to Central, East-European and Russian Studies’ and has also taught on modules in Russian translation, literature and film. Conor has collaborated with fellow alumnus Brian Horowitz on translations into English of selected Russian language works by Jewish authors – notably Lev Levanda, Vladimir Zhabotinsky and Buki Ben Yogli, to be published as part of The Feuilleton Project, a collaboration between scholars at the University of Michigan, Ohio State University and Michigan State University.