Awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University in 2015, Fergal Keane is Special Correspondent for the BBC and a prolific author.
Fergal was educated at schools in Dublin and Cork and started his working life on the Limerick Leader. After nine years in the Irish print press he moved in 1988 to the BBC becoming Ireland correspondent, South Africa correspondent, Asia Correspondent and most recently Special Correspondent.
Fergal has been at the forefront of reporting social and political change from the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1990s to democracy in South Africa and then handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
He gained particular attention for his reporting of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and won a BAFTA in 1997 for his documentary Valentina’s Story. He is the only journalist to have won the Royal Television Society award and the Sony Radio reporter of the Year award, both in 1994.
In 2005 Fergal helped set up Msaada a charity that assists survivors of the Rwandan genocide.
As an author Fergal has covered a wide range of topics from the regime change in South Africa in 1994 in The Bondage of Fear, to a book entitled Road of Bones about the Battle for Kohima in India during WW2 (published in 2010).