The period since 1980, one of intense social change in Ireland, has witnessed manifold scholarly and intellectual breakthroughs, a weighty library of historiography, and a fluorescence of cultural criticism that has greatly enriched our understanding of Ireland and the Irish story. Yet despite its scholarly and intellectual achievements, there are besetting contradictions and conflicts in the field that we call ‘Irish studies’. Irish studies has a national focus, but an inextricably international institutional ecology. This essay charts the story of Irish studies alert to these contradictions. It examines how and where it developed as a scholarly field, how it responded to internal and external pressures, including the Troubles. It considers how Irish studies negotiated academic frames such as postcolonialism, feminism, and cultural theory and, relatedly, the lasting impact of revisionist-nationalist debates. It analyses how consensus and debate formed what Irish studies covered and, as importantly, what it did not. It concludes by considering the impact of the transnational turn on Irish studies in the twenty-first century.