Gerry Smyth has been a lecturer in English at Liverpool John Moores University since 1991. He researches in the areas of Irish cultural history (particularly popular music), modern fiction, post-colonialism, and contemporary critical theory. He has lectured across Europe and the United States, and held fellowships at institutions in Prague, Monaco and Vienna. In 2012 he received Honorary Membership of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania. He is a member of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature, the British Association for Irish Studies, and the European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies. 

Smyth is a founder member of the Liverpool-Irish Literary Theatre, specialising in the writing and production of plays on Irish literary themes. In 2011 Smyth wrote a two-man show entitled The Brother which he adapted from the work of Flann O'Brien. He performed the play (with actor David Llewellyn, directed by Andrew Sherlock) at an international Flann O'Brien conference in Vienna in July 2011, and at another international conference in Trieste in May 2012. The Brother had a six-night run at the Edinburgh Free Fringe Festival in August 2012, and has subsequently been performed at the Eleanor Rathbone Theatre (the University of Liverpool), as part of the 2012 May Festival at the University of Aberdeen, and at the IASIL (International Association for the Study of Irish Literature) Conference in Lille in June 2014. Smyth wrote a companion piece entitled Will the Real Flann O'Brien ...? A Life in Five Scenes which he performed (in a double header with The Brother) at the 2013 Liverpool Irish Festival, and at the Third Flann O'Brien Conference in Prague in July 2015. The Liverpool Irish Literary Theatre travelled to the O'Brien conference Salzburg in July 2017 to perform a trio of short plays, including two by Flann O'Brien - Thirst and The Dead Spit of Kelly - as well as The Golden Gate by Lord Dunsany.

In August 2017 Smyth's play Nora & Jim - based on an episode in the lives of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle - ran for six nights at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

In October 2018 Smyth’s cabaret adaptation of the album ‘’Murder Ballads’’ by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds premiered at the Liverpool Royal Court. The show played to excellent reviews over three nights, and was developed for further performances throughout 2019.

Gerry Smyth is also a musician. Besides a variety of folk music, Smyth has recorded two albums of specifically Irish interest: James Joyce's Chamber Music: New Folkish Settings of the Thirty-Six Lyrics (2012) and Words for Music, Perhaps: Fifteen Songs Set to the Poetry of W.B. Yeats (2019).

With the Liverpool-Irish Literary Theatre (LILT) Smyth has written, produced and performed a number of Irish-related shows, including The Brother (2011), Will the Real Flann O'Brien...? (2013), Nora and Jim (2016), A Drink with Brendan Behan (2018), and Echoes of a Blue Dee: A New Setting of the Deirdre Legend (2019). 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY23GIVxrqE