As the second most popular use of the internet, genealogy or family history research has become and is continuing to grow as a widespread, investigative life-writing practice. More than a benign hobby practised in the dusty basements of public archives and libraries, genealogy research is engaged in asking provocative questions about identity, authenticity, history, responsibility, and belonging. However, despite the significant interest in popular genealogy research there has been little academic writing devoted to exploring and analysing the pursuit. Julia Watson's 1996 call to question whether genealogy and autobiography are ‘incompatible frames of reference’ has gone mostly unheard (316). Surveying texts such as Tom Hayden's memoir Irish on the Inside: In Search of the Soul of Irish America (2001) and Bryan Sykes' history/mythology Blood of the Isles: Exploring the Genetic Roots of our Tribal History (2006), this interdisciplinary essay seeks to remedy such an absence, by framing genealogical research as an identity-forming intervention into the political present.