Colum Hourihane received his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, in 1983 for a thesis on the iconography of Gothic art in Ireland, part of which was subsequently published as Gothic Art in Ireland 1169-1550: Enduring Vitality (2003). He was deputy director of the Witt Computer Index in the Courtauld Institute until 1997 before becoming director of the Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, where he was until retirement in 2014. He has edited over twenty volumes of art historical studies and has single-authored five volumes. Among the latter are The Processional Cross in Late Medieval England: The Dallye Cross (2005) and Pontius Pilate, Anti-Semitism, and the Passion in medieval Art (2009). A fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, he was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Irish Academy in 2015.