Gene Sheehy

Gene Sheehy grew up in County Clare and has spent more than two decades pursuing an obsessive interest in the history of the ancient Near East, with a particular focus on the small kingdoms and forgotten polities that shaped the Iron Age Levant from the margins rather than the centre. A graduate of University College Dublin, he came to the Kingdom of Geshur through a long engagement with the archaeology of the Golan Heights and the diplomatic history of the early Israelite monarchy. He is fascinated by the way small states survive, or fail to survive, between empires, and by the cultural syntheses that border communities produce when great civilisational traditions collide. The Fortress at the Bridge is his most ambitious work to date, and one of several historical studies he has written exploring the ancient world's forgotten peoples.