Professor Maxim Fomin completed his doctoral thesis on the topic of righteous kingship in Early Ireland and Ancient India having graduated with PhD in Early and Medieval Irish from University College Cork. He then moved on to Ulster University working initially as Assitant Editor of the eDIL: Digitisation of the Dictionary of the Irish Language project (2003-2007), then as Lecturer in Humanities (2007-2013), Senior Lecturer (2013-2017) and Reader (2017-2024).

Appointed as Research Director in Modern Languages and Linguistics between 2017-2023, he led Ulster University's UoA 26 to being recognised as joint first among the top 10 UK HEIs for Impact in the latest REF2021. In 2023, Modern Languages at Ulster achieved 96% satisfaction rate in the PRES survey, the highest across the University and 11% than the national average.

He was promoted to Professor in Celtic Studies, Digitial Humanities and Irish Folklore in 2024.

Prof. Fomin's specialisms fall under 3 groupings:

Irish folklore and oral culture, comparative studies of folk beliefs and cultural practices in European and Oriental traditions, Irish oral narrative, international folktales and migratory legends, public celebrations and calendar festivals,

Celto-Slavic, Celto-Indic and Celto-Armenian parallels in language and culture, Irish medieval narrative literature, adaptation of foreign sources in Ireland, Arthurian tales in Early Modern Irish written tradition, Indo-European comparative linguistics.

Digitisation and linguistic computing in Celtic Studies, history of Celtic studies in the 19th and early 20th cc.; climate change, sustainability and oral history; application of AR/VR formats to the conservation of tangible and intangible heritage.

Affiliations: Secretary, Equality and Diversity Officer of the Learned Association Societas Celto-Slavica, Founding Member, General Editor of Studia Celto-Slavica series.

He is Expert Reviewer and Alumnus of the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung network, supported by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, having spent periods of research at the Eberhard-Karls University of Tübingen in 2016-7 and University of Leipzig in 2022-3.

He is Member of the Editorial Board of Centre for Research in Breton and Celtic (CRBC) at the University of Western Brittany, Brest (UBO) in 2019 and has been Visiting Professor in Celtic Studies at CRBC between 2021-2024.

He is member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UKRI) Peer-Review College since 2018 and Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy (UK) since 2023.

He was member of the Executive Board, Vice Chair and Chair of the Irish Humanities Alliance (RIA, Dublin) between 2017-2023.