Originally trained in economics and statistics at Yale, Akenson's mentor in the study of Irish history was John V. Kelleher, the founder of the Department of Celtic Languages and Literature at Harvard. Akenson's early works in Irish history focused on the religious
history of Ireland, particularly the history of the
Church of Ireland, and on the history of Irish education, with an emphasis on how educational practices either tended to heal or to further engender sectarian strife. Brian Titley wrote of Akenson's efforts in the chronicling of Irish education that "until it attracted the attention of D.H. Akenson, the writing of Irish educational history was moribund, amateurish and narrow in both scope and sympathy." Akenson then moved to the study of the Irish diaspora. He became known to many Irish-American scholars in 1984 and 1985 when in his
The Irish In Ontario (1984) and
Being Had: Historians, Evidence, and the Irish in North America (1985) he controversially called for (1) historians of Irish immigration in North America to make use of the better-documented Canadian data on Irish immigration and (2) historians to recognize that the long practice of ignoring Irish Protestant migration, particularly in the nineteenth century, was at best a foolish mistake and at worst a case of scholarly bigotry. Having called into question many, if not all, of the most-dearly clung to assumptions of traditional scholars of Irish immigration in America, an all-out scholarly war ensued, and Akenson made his case again in 1996 with
The Irish Diaspora: A Primer. In this latter work, and indeed as in all of his books, Akenson pulls no punches. In 1990, the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada named
The Irish in Ontario (1984) "one of the most important publications in social science in the past 50 years in Canada," == Religious history ==