Career
Hughes remains a highly regarded historian over thirty years after her early death. A mark of this respect was demonstrated with the inclusion of two of her articles in volume one of A New History of Ireland, published in 2006. Despite both having been written in 1974, they were included because
"she was one of the most distinguished early Irish church historian(s) of her generation", and as they had "been heralded as forthcoming since her death.
Hughes obtained her Doctor of Philosophy in London, and became a fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge.
She was the Nora Chadwick Reader in Celtic Studies, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge. Her best-known work was The Modern Traveller to the Early Irish Church, which was co-written with Doctor Hamlin.
Ireland in Early Mediaeval Europe: Studies in Memory of Kathleen Hughes was published in 1981 and edited by Dorothy Whitelock, Rosamond McKitterick and David Dumville. Hughes is also commemorated by the Kathleen Hughes Fund.