Christine is a professor in architectural history at Trinity College Dublin and leads an Irish Research Council Advanced Laureate research project, CRAFTVALUE, which focuses on craftsmanship in eighteenth-century architecture.

From 2017-19 she directed Making Victorian Dublin. She has published widely on architecture and decoration including the definitive reference work on Dublin city, Dublin (Yale University Press, 2005) and Making magnificence: architects, stuccatori and the eighteenth-century interior (Yale University Press, 2017). For the latter she was awarded the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion (2018) by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain for ‘outstanding contribution to architectural history’. A member of the Royal Irish Academy and an honorary member of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, she has served on national organisations for architectural heritage and has held numerous international research fellowships. She has been elected Parnell Fellow, at Magdalene College, Cambridge 2021-22.