Debra A. Mulligan was born in Rhode Island, and received her Master of Arts and Ph.D. in History from Providence College.  She has taught a variety of courses in East Asian, European, and American history at Roger Williams University. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame and has just been appointed vice president of the national History Honor Society, Phi Alpha Theta.

Her publications include a chapter in the two- volume study:  The Cultural History of Reading (Greenwood Press, 2009), Lexington Books: Chapter, “Soul Libertie and the Sons and Daughters of Eire,” in Narratives and Negotiations:  Agency, Religion, and the State. Lexington Books, 2015, and articles in the Historical Journal of Massachusetts (Winter 2007), and the New England Journal of History.  Her book, Democratic Repairman: The Political Life of James Howard McGrath has been recently published by McFarland Press in May 2019.