Postgraduate Researchers

Jaclyn Allen

Thesis Title: The (Self) Configurations of the Woman Poet in Ireland and Britain, 1930-1950

Jaclyn Allen’s doctoral project concentrates on mid-twentieth century English and Irish women poets with case studies of Temple Lane,

Freda Laughton, Elizabeth Daryush, and Ruth Pitter.  She holds an M.A. in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama from UCD and a B.A. in English Literature from Washington University in Saint Louis (USA).

Supervisor: Assoc. Professor Lucy Collins

Taylor Allgeier-Follett

Thesis title: 'An Arbitrary Misfortune': Negotiating women's relationship to the family in the contemporary Irish novel

Taylor (he/they) holds an Honors B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.Phil with Distinction in Irish Writing from Trinity College Dublin. His current research focuses on female characters as they navigate the family in contemporary Irish fiction, including works from authors such as Elske Rahill, Anne Enright, and Niamh Campbell. Taylor's additional research interests include gender studies, trans studies, LGBTQ+ writing in Ireland and beyond, and LGBTQ+ representation in contemporary media and popular culture. 

Supervisor: Professor Anne Fogarty

Mathieu Bokestael   

                                                                                                       

Thesis Title: Reclaiming Community: Immunity, Gift and Care in Contemporary Scottish Writing

Mathieu holds degrees in Literature and Linguistics (BA, 2013), Western Literature (MA,2014) and Cultural Studies (MA, 2015), all from the Catholic University of Leuven. Prior to embarking on his PhD, he held various guest lectureships in Dutch Studies at Jawaharlal NehruUniversity (Delhi, 2016), the Latvian Academy of Culture (Riga, 2016-2019), and the University of Strasbourg (2019-2021). His dissertation, funded by the Irish Research Council, explores the manner in which theories of immunity and care can help us understand how communities are imagined in contemporary writing about Scotland. Alongside his academic work, Mathieu has also written for the Flemish magazine MO* and coordinated multiple cultural events, such as lectures, readings and film festivals.

Supervisor: Dr Treasa De Loughry

Amanda Byrne  

 

Thesis Title: Reading Testimony: Giorgio Agamben, Samuel Beckett and Primo Levi

2014-2016            Higher Diploma in English Literature at UCD

2016-2017            MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at UCD

2019-                    Structured PhD programme at UCD

Supervisor: Professor John Brannigan

Louisa Carroll  

 

Thesis Title: ' Something in the Water': An Eco-critical and Psychogeographical Investigation of the Relationship between 20th and 21st Cebturt Irish Writers and the Grand Canal

Louisa has a B.A. in English and Art History and an M.A. in Drama and Performance Studies from UCD. She is an Irish Research Council Doctoral Scholar (2017-2021) and a Resident Scholar at UCD Humanities Institute. Recently her work has appeared in The Irish Times, Sunday Times and Books Ireland. 

Online Profile : @CanalWriters

Supervisor: Professor John Brannigan

Lauren Cassidy  

 

Thesis Title: Gender, Sovereignty and the Changing Nation: The Irish Feminist Novel, 1963-2023

Lauren was awarded her Bachelor of Arts in English and History in 2018, and Master of Arts in English in 2019 at the University of Limerick. Her current research posits that Irish mythology’s sovereignty goddess is experiencing a renaissance in contemporary women’s writing. Lauren is interested in feminist psychoanalysis, sexuality/ gender studies, and cultural analytics.

Supervisor: Professor Gerardine Meaney

Thinley Chodon

Thesis Title: "Worlding Contemporary Tibetan Writings of the Global Tibetan Diaspora and Exiles: Exploring Resistance and Tibetanness" 

Thinley completed her undergraduate and postgraduate training in English Literature from Lady Shri Ram College for Women at the University of Delhi and Shiv Nadar University, respectively. She then went on to teach English at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, New Delhi (2019-20) and worked as an Editor for a Publishing house in 2021 whilst also taking up acting in online plays from 2020-21. Thinley's doctoral project aims to establish Contemporary Tibetan writing in the context of the transnational and world literary systems which bring to light questions that bear immense importance for postcolonial and world literary frameworks. This project draws on systematically studying Contemporary Tibetan literature in English, elaborating on contemporary Tibetanness, and its effects on exiled Tibetan communities since the 1980s. Thinley is an Irish Research Council Scholarship Awardee.

Supervisor: Dr Treasa De Loughry

 

Poulomi Choudhury 

Thesis Title: Fleshy Food Resources of the Future

Poulomi Choudhury's research explores depictions of meat in dystopian literature within the context of the current climate crisis and resultant food systems. Her study has been awarded the ‘UCD College of Arts and Humanities Doctoral Fee Scholarship’ and will evolve within UCD's Environmental Humanities research collective.

Poulomi holds a BA in English Literature (2006-09) and was awarded the Government of Ireland Scholarship to complete her MPhil in Popular Literature from Trinity College Dublin (2013-14). She holds another Masters in Cultural Studies (2019-20). Poulomi's research interests include food studies, critical animal studies, vegan studies, gender and sexuality studies, disability studies, and critical race theory.

Simon Costello

Thesis Title: The Vertical Corpse: Addiction and the Poetic Memoir.

Gráinne Daly‌  

Thesis Title: From pitch to the page: the geographics of sports fiction and the politics of space in The Game  

Gráinne is an IRC scholar who holds a B.A from Trinity College Dublin and an M.A from Liverpool John Moores University. She graduated from UCD with an M.A in Creative Writing in 2017. She is writing a novel as a research by practice component of her Ph.D in Creative Writing. Her current research focuses on sport and remembrance culture in Irish literature.  

Supervisors: Dr Paul Perry, Dr. Lee McGowan (USC Brisbane)

 

Suchismita Dattagupta 

Thesis Title: Reading Hair as a Symbol of Resistance among African-American Women from 1920s-1980s

I pursued my BA and MA in English from St. Xavier’s College and Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, respectively. I completed MPhil in English Studies from Christ University, Bengaluru, India. I taught under-graduate classes while pursuing MPhil. My current research interest is African-American literature, Gender Studies, Modernism and Hair symbolism.

Supervisors: Dr Katherine Fama & Dr Maria Stuart

Kevin Doherty

Kevin completed a BA in English in 2018 followed by an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature in 2019. His current research is focused on the workings of childhood memory in the poetry of Seamus Heaney. He’d like it to be known that he can’t believe his luck and only hopes that it holds.

Supervisor: Dr. Catriona Clutterbuck

Katie Donnelly

Thesis title: Imperilled Bodies: Mining Disasters and Labour Regimes in Nineteenth-Century British Settler Colonial Literature

I completed my BA degree in English Literature and German in UCD in 2018. I also hold an MA degree in Literature and Culture from UCD. My dissertation focussed on literary depictions of female insanity in nineteenth century gothic fiction.
My current research focuses on the labour regimes and extractive mineral industries of the British settler colonies of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa between 1842-1910. The focus on “Imperilled Bodies” relates to the subjection of labourers to harsh or fatal conditions based on race or social ranking, hence looking at literary responses to critical labour events such as: strikes, mining accidents, and racial riots and attacks. The project analyses how such conditions are fictionalised in colonial literature, additionally considering how cultural prejudices are often Gothicised to create a racial Other.
Supervisor: Dr Sarah Comyn

Beth Doyle

Thesis title: “You Dead Women In Your Graves”: Reading Resistance in Mid-Century Modernist Verse.

Bachelor of Arts Degree in English and Irish from University College Cork. 2017-2020.

Masters in English- Modernities: Literature, Theory and Culture from the Romantics to the Present. 2020-2021.

Supervisor: Assoc. Professor Lucy Collins

Jun Du 

Thesis Title: Autonomy and Interdependency in Post-2010 Irish Women’s Writing

Jun holds an M.A. in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama from UCD and an M.A. in Irish Studies from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Her current research, funded by UCD-CSC Scholarship Scheme, seeks to analyse Irish women’s writing, post 2010, through the lenses of biopolitics and geocriticism.

Supervisor: Professor Margaret Kelleher

Bernadette Fox‌ 

Thesis Title : Adrift on the Sea in Beckett’s Prose: An Ecocritical Reading for the Anthropocene

BA International in English, University College Dublin, 2011 - 2015.

MPhil: Irish Writing in English, Trinity College Dublin 2015 - 2016.

PhD English, University College Dublin, 2018 - present.

Supervisor: Professor John Brannigan

 

Rosanne Gallenne

Thesis Title: The Trope of the Garden in Poetry by Women in Ireland: A Space of (Re)Definition.

Rosanne holds a BA in Foreign and Regional Literatures, Languages and Civilizations from the Catholic University of the West (France) where she studied English, Spanish and Russian. She completed her MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at UCD in 2018. Located at the intersection of ecofeminist and affect theories, her thesis explores Irish women poets' re-appropriation of the trope of the garden, from the mid-twentieth century to the present days.

Supervisor: Associate Professor Lucy Collins 

Marty Gilroy 

Thesis Title : Reading the World City: New York, London and the Capitalist World-System in the Contmeporary Post-Crash Novel

• B.A. English and History, 2013

• M.A. Modernity, Literature and Culture, 2014

• University College Dublin

Marty’s research investigates how the 2008 financial crash helped stimulate engagement with the project of “cognitive mapping” in the novel, situating core world cities within a global system of economic relations. 

Funded by the Irish Research Council

Supervisor: Dr Sharae Deckard

 

Catherine Godlewsky 

Thesis Title : Adam Yet Living: A Critical and Creative Response to Marilynne Robinson’s Philosophical Essays 

Catherine holds a B.A. in English from Centenary University and an M.Phil. in Linguistics from Trinity College Dublin. Her current research project pushes the boundaries of formal criticism by blending critical and creative elements in a response to Marilynne Robinson’s philosophical essays. 

Supervisors: Ian Davidson and Clare Hayes-Brady

Jennifer Gouck 

Thesis Title: “If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.” An Exploration of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl in Contemporary American Young Adult Literature, Media, and Culture

Jennifer is an IRC scholar who completed her BA and MA at Queen’s University Belfast. In 2016 she won the IAAS WTM Riches Essay Prize and was shortlisted for the ISSCL’s 2018 award for an Outstanding Thesis on Children’s Literature. Her research interests include contemporary YA fiction, popular fiction, and C21st American literature. 

Supervisors:

Dr Maria Stuart (Semester 1 2018/19); Dr Clare Hayes-Brady (Semester 2 2018/19 onwards)

Kaori Hirashige‌‌

Thesis Title: Music in Early 20th Century Revivalist Literature

I am interested in the role of music in the Irish Revival, particularly in the works of James Joyce, Lady Gregory, and Sean O’Casey. I received my MA degree from the University of Tokyo, Japan.

Supervisor: Professor Anne Fogarty

Harriet Idle

Thesis Title: Global Spaces of the Contemporary Romantic Comedy    

Hattie is an Ad Astra PhD scholar who completed her BA in English Literature with American Study at the University of Exeter in 2017, and subsequently graduated from the University of Glasgow with an MLitt in Film and Television Studies in 2019. Her research interests include the romantic comedy genre and cities in cinema.

Supervisor: Dr Martha Shearer

Neha Kamrani 

Thesis Title: Portraying Sexual Violence on Stage

Neha Kamrani is presently working as a Research Fellow for a research project by UNESCO in New Delhi. She completed her Masters and MPhil in English Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her MPhil dissertation, New Rape Narratives in the Indian Public Sphere focused on rape narratives uttered via new media forms. In India, she worked as a Teaching Assistant at IIT Delhi and as an Assistant Professor at Delhi University. 

Supervisor: Assoc. Professor Emile Pine

Valerie Kennedy

Thesis Title: "They Were All Frightened of Her, Because She Was Such a Strange Girl": Irish Literature, Biopolitics and the 'Unmarried Mother'

Valerie was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in English and Film Studies in 2020, and Master of Arts in Irish Literature and Culture in 2021 from University College Dublin. As an awardee of the Irish Research Council scholarship, she intends to establish previously overlooked connections between literary representations by Irish authors and socio-political values in order to advance our critical understanding of the ‘unmarried mother’ figure in Irish cultural settings. Her project will be the first extensive examination of Irish literature and discourses surrounding this historically stigmatised character.

Supervisor: Professor Margaret Kelleher

Clare Ní Cheallaigh

Thesis Title: Material Tales: African storyteller-authors in the literary marketplace                 

Clare is an Ad Astra PhD candidate whose research examines the processes and implications of the transformation of oral tradition into a literary product. She is specifically interested in the work of D. O. Fágúnwà, Thomas Mofolo, Amos Tútùọlá, Ben Okri and Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. Clare holds a BA in English Literature and Greek from Trinity College Dublin and an MA in World Literature from the University of Oxford. 

Supervisor: Dr Sarah Comyn

Annie Khabaza

 

Thesis Title: “Barely English”: Richard Stanihurst, Edmund Spenser, and the Remaking of the Aeneid in Early Modern Ireland

Annie is a UCD-funded PhD scholar whose research focuses on sixteenth century interpretations of the Virgilian epic narrative. She holds a BA in English and Comparative Literary Studies from the University of Warwick, and a MA in Medieval and Renaissance Literature from Durham University.

Supervisor: Professor Jane Grogan

Pearse McCaughey 

Thesis Title: The Price of Plumcake. Economic Reality in James Joyce’s Dublin

After a thirty-five year career in advertising, I returned to UCD completing a BA in English in 2017, and an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama. I am currently a PhD student in The School of English Drama and Film and a proud member of the UCD Creative Fellows.

Supervisor: Dr Luca Crispi

Andrew McEneff

Thesis Title: A Prolonged Derangement of the Senses: A Critical Study of the work of Anna Kavan.

Andrew McEneff is a graduate of the American College Dublin (B.A), University College Dublin (M.A) and Trinity College (Mphil). He is currently researching a PhD on the exceptional life and work of British Modernist writer Anna Kavan (1901-1968). He also lectures part-time in English Literature at the American College.

Supervisors:
Professor John Brannigan & Associate Professor Nerys Williams 

 

Kelly Michels

Thesis Title: American Anthem: Poems and Essays

Kelly Michels received her MA in literature from George Mason University and her MFA in poetry from North Carolina State University before coming to UCD to pursue her PhD. Her creative work has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee Lit, Tampa Review, Poet Lore, Third Coast, Best New Poets, Greensboro Review, New Ohio Review, among others. She is the author of two pamphlets: Mother and Child with Flowers (2012) and Disquiet (2015). She has taught writing and literature at multiple universities, including Campbell University and North Carolina State University. Her PhD thesis in creative writing explores the topic of American gun violence through a book-length collection of poems supplemented by practice-based research.

Supervisor: Associate Professor Paul Perry

 

Jacob Miller

Thesis Title: The Origins of Post-Truth: Neoliberalism and Epistemic Crisis in Anglo-American Fiction, 1980 to the Present                                                                                                                                            

BA in English, University of York, 2016.

MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Culture, University of York, 2017.

Jacob’s research investigates how literary aesthetics animated by resistance to neoliberalism have been incorporated into post-truth as a political strategy to deny capitalism’s material and ecological limits.

Funded by the Irish Research Council

Supervisors: Associate Professor Adam Kelly & Dr Sharae Deckard

Midia Mohammadi

Thesis Title: Narcissistic Women In Search of Lost Selfhood: A Study in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century American Fiction

Midia received her MA in English Literature from the University of Tehran in 2021. Her research has
resulted in publishing five articles and presenting at seventeen international conferences. She has been
a member of the Irish Association for American Studies since 2021 and is the recipient of the UCD
College of Arts and Humanities Doctoral Fee Scholarship 2022 and is affiliated with the Threshold of
Knowledge research theme.
Midia’s PhD project proposes an interdisciplinary inspection of the figure of the narcissistic woman in
modern American fiction. Revisiting and revising psychoanalytic insights, the project engages
contemporary work in affect theory and feminist theory. An intersectional project that reinvigorates
textual portraits of the narcissistic woman, the work breaks new ground in thinking about “selfish”
racialized women in American literature.

Supervisor: Professor Katherine Fama

Gráinne Ní Nualláin 

Thesis Title: Mind Your Language: Taboo Femininity and the Realities of Being in Magical Realism

Gráinne studied her BA in English, followed by an MA in Renaissance Literature, both at UCD (2013-2018). Her studies, while always fiercely feminist in nature, are currently focused on representations of "taboo" femininities, including menstruation and sexuality, and the historical (mis)treatment of female illness, with an interest in the medical humanities.

Supervisor: Dr Sharae Deckard

Caleb O'Connor

Thesis Title: Queering Urban Ecologies: Rewilding, Rehabilitation, and Resistance in Contemporary Indigenous Queer Eco-Poetics.

Caleb’s research explores how queer cultural production influences ecological commitments to
urban change, by confronting the question of who sustainable cityscapes are being built for and
where subaltern communities fit into green futurities. Contemporary transitions towards climate-
friendly cities and green neighbourhoods have been critiqued for proliferating the displacement of
working-class and underprivileged communities in urban centres through a process known as eco-
gentrification. The neoliberal incentive of urban greening has limited the access of clean-water,
organic food, and accessibility in many major world cities to those who can afford it. By reading the
poetry of Tommy Pico, Julian T. Brolaski, and Jake Skeets, Caleb’s research seeks to understand how
the emergence of an indigiqueer poetics explores new ways of thinking about the relationship
between nature and culture, through a synthesis of trans poetics and Beat traditions. By reading the
aesthetics of emergent indigiqueer poetics, Caleb’s thesis considers how the form’s preoccupation
with rehabilitation might offer a fresh perspective on queer-ecological thought. Mapped along the
water, energy, and food (WEF) nexus, Caleb’s thesis seeks to explore the ways that indigiqueer
poetics utilises queer ecological and intersectional thought to imagine alternative socio-ecological
systems.

Supervisor: Dr Treasa De Loughry

Phoebe O'Leary

Thesis Title: Unremembered Trauma: Cultural Memories of the AIDS Crisis in Ireland.

Phoebe is an artist and interdisciplinary researcher investigating the relationship between performance practice and AIDS histories. Her research and teaching interests encompass contemporary performance and theatre practice, health policy, social epidemiology, queer theory, and bisexual epistemologies. She holds an MSc in Sexuality and Gender from the University of Amsterdam and an MPhil in Performance Studies from Trinity College Dublin.

Supervisor: Dr Cormac O'Brien

So Onose

Thesis Title: Joyce and Irish “New Nationalisms” (1891-1922): Historical and Political Contexts of Ulysses.

So holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Tokyo, and an MPhil in Criticism and Culture from the University of Cambridge. He has previously taught English and English literature as occasional lecturer at Tokyo Medical and Dental University. He is the recipient of a University of Tokyo scholarship.

Supervisor: Professor Anne Fogarty

 

Odin O'Sullivan

Thesis Title: “Blood, Sweat, Respect:” A Genealogy of Reactionary Hardbody Cinema.

Odin O’Sullivan is a second-year doctoral student in the School of English, Drama, and Film.

He is continuing the work he began in his MLitt having been granted a direct transfer into stage two of the PhD programme. His research tracks Hollywood’s somatic histories and theories of the male body in order to analyze both political and cultural shifts in American society and masculinity with a particular focus on American action cinema and its stars.

Supervisor: Professor Diane Negra & Dr. Anthony McIntyre

Jason O'Toole

Thesis Title: The Role of Early Modern Touch in the Formation of King James VI and I’s Sexuality, 1575-1625

 Jason decided to pursue another degree majoring in English/minoring in French at Maynooth University after twenty years of working in category management, new business development, and marketing roles for major film studios in the UK. His doctoral research, sponsored by an Irish Research Council scholarship, carries on from his MLitt and centres on the role of early modern touch in forming sexuality between King James VI and I, his favourites, and his wife, Queen Anna of Denmark.

Supervisor: Professor Danielle Clarke

 

Chloe Power

Thesis Title: The Progressive Fantastic: Race, Gender, Sexuality and the Evolution of Transmedia Fantasy 2010-2021

Chloe holds a B.A in English, Media and Cultural Studies from Dun Laoghaire Institute Of Art Design and Technology and an M.A in Literature and Culture from University College Dublin. Her research focuses on the interdisciplinary fields of fantasy in television and literature, offering an inter-sectional analysis of the representation of gender, race and sexuality in the contemporary genre.  Its interdisciplinary methodology combines analysis of fantasy novels with television adaptations, exploring the emergence of fantasy TV and the inter-medial impact of the genre’s new prominence in the market

Supervisor: Assoc. Professor Jorie Lagerwey & Assoc. Professor Sharae Deckard

Bellatrix Scindens

Bella studied for a Bachelor's degree in Archaeology & Anthropology, and a Masters' degree in Medieval Studies at Magdalen College Oxford and King's College London respectively. Her research focuses on the development of Computus as a genre of literature in early medieval England.

Supervisor: Assoc. Professor Rebecca Stephenson

Deborah Schrijvers

Thesis title: Decolonizing Extinction: Intersections of Race, Gender, and Species in Contemporary Art and Literature

Deborah Schrijvers is an Ad Astra PhD scholar at University College Dublin within the department of Environmental Humanities. She holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Amsterdam, a BA in Literatures in English & Literary Theory from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and a Research MA degree in Literary Studies from Leiden University. Her research focuses on decolonizing extinction, paying special attention to gender and race through analyses of contemporary, transnational literature, film and art. Her research interests include: critical animal studies, vegan studies, gender and sexuality studies, critical race theory and black studies.

Supervisor: Dr. Hannah Boast

Dee Steve

Thesis title: Writing the Apocalypse between Trans Ecologies and Trans Poetics

Christian Wethered

Christian Wethered is a poet and songwriter based in Dublin. He was selected for and published by the ‘Poetry Ireland Introductions Series’, and has has featured in 'Poetry Ireland', 'The Moth' and 'Ink, Sweat and Tears', as well as ‘TodayFM', ‘RTE1' and 'RTE Arts'. He has been anthologised in 'Writing Home’ (Dedalus) and ‘Best of New British and Irish Poets’, and was exhibited at the Olivier Cornet Gallery. His first pamphlet ‘I Don’t Love You’ (Eyewear) was shortlisted for the Melita Hume Prize. He was runner up in the 'Cafe Writers' and the 'Aesthetica Creative Works competitions'. In 2020 he was awarded a PhD Development Fund by UCD, as well as funding from 'Arts and Disability Ireland’. As a songwriter he has collaborated with a number of Irish acts, including Loah, I Have a Tribe, Zaska, and has most recently played at The Ruby Sessions and Electric Picnic. 

His PhD currently focuses on collaborations between music and poetry, translation, docu-poetry and the poetics of travel.

Supervisor: Assoc. Professor Paul Perry

Loic Wright 

Thesis Title: "How Men Should Live: Concepts and Constructions of Masculinities in Mid-Twentieth Century Irish Fiction and Memoir Literature."

Loic completed his joint BA honours in English and Spanish at UCD in 2016 before undertaking an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama where he submitted his thesis on James Joyce and Patrick Kavanagh. His current research focuses on ideas of manhood in fiction and memoirs in mid-century Ireland.  

Supervisor: Dr Cormac O'Brien

Justine Zapin

Thesis Title: Settling the Irish Question? Bernard Shaw, Irish Dissident Dramatist

Justine holds a B.F.A. in Acting and Classical Theater from Marymount Manhattan College and an M.A. in Literature from American University. Her research focuses on the role of space and the material staging of Bernard Shaw's Irish plays in Dublin. Other interests include the Anglo-Irish dramatists of the Restoration and the impact of Michael Chekhov's psycho-physical approach on contemporary continental theatre. 

Supervisor: Professor Eamonn Jordan