Education
He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in Modern Irish from the National University of Ireland in 1986 for his thesis on Máirtín Ó Cadhain.
He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in Modern Irish from the National University of Ireland in 1986 for his thesis on Máirtín Ó Cadhain.
Born in Cork in 1961 and educated at Coláiste an Spioraid Naoimh, de Paor edited the Irish language journal Innti, founded in 1970 by Michael Davitt, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Liam Ó Muirthile and Gabriel Rosenstock. He and his family emigrated to Australia in 1987 and lived in Melbourne, where he wrote, gave poetry readings and broadcast in Irish on the Special Broadcasting Service (a network set up for speakers of ethnic languages). He was given scholarships by the Australia Council in 1990, 1991 and 1995.
He returned to Ireland in 1996, and is now the Director of the Centre for Irish Studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway.
De Paor has worked alongside several other Irish language writers, such as Seán Ó Tuama, with whom he edited a twentieth century anthology of poetry in Irish. He has also published academic works.
De Paor has collaborated with the Cork traditional and folk singer, John Spillane under the name Gaelic Hit Factory. He has also collaborated with such traditional musicians as the piper Ronan Browne and the Irish-Egyptian sean-nós singer Naisrín Elsafty.