Martin Dowling is a historian, sociologist, and fiddle player, and lecturer in Irish Traditional Music in the School of Music and Sonic Arts in Queen’s University of Belfast. Martin has performed internationally with his wife, flute player and singer Christine Dowling. He teaches fiddle regularly at Scoil Samhradh Willy Clancy and the South Sligo Summer School, as well as at festivals and workshops in Europe and America. From 1998 until 2004 he was Traditional Arts Officer in the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

He is the author of Tenant Right and Agrarian Society in Ulster, 1600-1870 (Irish Academic Press, 1999), and has held postdoctoral fellowships in Queen’s University of Belfast and University College Dublin. Recent publications include “Fiddling for Outcomes: Traditional Music, Social Capital, and Arts Policy in Northern Ireland,” International Journal of Cultural Policy, vol. 14, no 2 (May, 2008); “’Thought-Tormented Music’: Joyce and the Music of the Irish Revival,” James Joyce Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 1 (2008); and "Rambling in the Field of Modern Identity: Some Speculations on Irish Traditional Music," Radharc: a Journal of Irish and Irish-American Studies, vols. 5-7 (2004-2006), pp. 109-136. He is currently working on a monograph history of Irish traditional music from the death of harpist-composer Turlough Carolan (1738) to the first performance of Riverdance (1994).