Bio
Beth Aherne is a PhD student in the Department of English. Her supervisors are Dr Miranda Corcoran and Dr Maureen O’Connor. Beth completed both her Joint Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and English and her Master’s in English - Modernities: Literature, Theory and Culture from the Romantics to the Present in UCC. Her research focuses on representations of the family in American science fiction. In particular, she is concerned with portrayals of queer families in feminist, Afrofuturist, and Indigenous futurist science fiction novels and short stories. Her project is entitled “Queering the Family in Science Fiction: An Intersectional Approach”.
Proposal
Despite science fiction’s association with advanced futures, representations of the family in SF remain faithful to the post-war American construct of the nuclear family. Popular SF families such as the Robinsons from Lost in Space invent fantastic futures for heterosexual married couples with their biological children and thus perpetuate Western patriarchal norms. My project uncovers how certain SF authors use genre-specific traits such as technological advancement to normalise queer (non-conventional) family forms. I show how authors including Marge Piercy employ genre-specific tropes such as time travel to reject and reimagine the gender, sexual, and racial norms upheld by the socially dominant family form. I contribute a nuanced and diverse investigation of queer representations of the family to SF studies by centralising sub-genres marginalised within the genre’s history such as feminist science fiction, Afrofuturism, and Indigenous futurism (SF written by Black and Indigenous authors). To conduct my investigation into alternative family futures, I interrogate how lesbian SF authors such as Ursula Le Guin, Black women authors such as Octavia E. Butler, and Indigenous women authors such as Cherie Dimaline reimagine tropes such as time travel and alien encounters to subvert misogynistic, racist, and colonialist attitudes that marginalise and exclude queer family forms.
Bio
I have completed the Bachelor of Social Science degree in University College Cork. As an undergraduate student at UCC, I received a Quercus College Scholarship for my academic achievements in 2019 and 2020. I completed my final year research project on the relationship between gender and environmental attitudes and behaviour, for which I was awarded ‘Best Final Year Sociology Dissertation’ 2021.
Proposal
This research shall explore gender relations in youth environmental activism, such as gender differences in participation, leadership, identity, climate concern, climate responsibility, climate justice related knowledge and education etc. This research shall be based in Ireland and focus on gender differences in youth environmental movements such as Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, as well as college environmental societies. The main aim of this research is to understand the experiences of youth involved in environmental activism through a gendered lens, using the research methods of ethnographic observation and interviews to explore the impact that gender inequality and stereotyping can have on climate action in Ireland. This research is of importance as it highlights potential gender differences within environmental activism which must be researched, analysed, and widely understood to create the societal and cultural shift needed to protect the planet. Research that explores gender differences in environmental activism can help recognize the potential unequal gendered experiences of those involved in these grassroots movements, in ways that can positively inform future approaches to climate policy, research, and practice.
Bio
Chris Clarke is a PhD candidate in the History of Art, University College Cork and is Senior Curator of the Glucksman, University College Cork where he has curated numerous exhibitions since 2011. He has also curated international exhibitions including Human Capital: Innsbruck International 2020; Under the Surface: Newfoundland & Labrador at the 55th Venice Biennale; and The Second Act at Arts Centre de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam. He is a frequent contributor to art journals and magazines including Art Monthly, Source, VAN and Photography & Culture, and numerous exhibition catalogues and artist monographs.
Proposal
The Curated Encounter: Experiencing the Contemporary Art Exhibition investigates how visual installations are experienced and interpreted by the individual viewer, emphasising the relationships between curatorial intention and public reception. Drawing on research from art history, visual studies and criticism, philosophy, affect studies, and architecture, the project posits the exhibition as a site of embodied cognition mediated by materiality, spatiality, and ideology.
By focusing on three case studies of groundbreaking exhibitions, this project re-constructs their curated arrangements of artworks, their strategies of exhibition design, and the architectural characteristics of their respective institutional settings to explore how spectators traversed the exhibition, experienced its contents, and learned from its provocations. Importantly, The Curated Encounter proposes the art exhibition as a site of active dialogue and exchange, where individuals gain cultural insight and where institutions generate knowledge. Curation coordinates these different encounters, offering a scholarly perspective on the selected artworks and a deep understanding of the exhibition context to facilitate new ways for viewers to experience and think about art.
Bio
Luca Gambirasio is an ecomusicologist, ethnomusicologist, and sound artist, currently studying for a PhD at University College Cork. Luca holds a BA in Jazz Music from Mascagni Conservatory in Livorno and a MA in Ethnomusicology from UCC. His current research interest is how the environment and related issues are represented in music in Italy and how music and sound can be used to mediate the connection between people and places.
Propoal
Environmental Humanities and ecomusicology have started to address the environmental crisis recently, and further research is needed to explore the various possible applications of music in this direction. Considering that the major world’s polluters are developed countries, research in these settings is important to understand how to tackle this issue. My research studies the relationship between musicians and the landscape and nurtures this relationship with applied ethnomusicological research in concomitance with my artistic practice. Under the supervision of Prof. Jonathan Stock and Dr Alexander Khalil, I aim to observe, document, and participate in a series of musical events that highlight the interdependent relationship between humans and nature in this region. With a double role of artist and ethnomusicologist, I aim to explore from those dual perspectives the depth of meanings and impacts inspired by such events. Following a post-humanist approach, I also consider human responses to sounds produced by more-than-humans, conducting research at sound-walks and festivals, thus producing a wide and inclusive analysis of a series of sonic niches designed to engage the ecological crisis. While across the EU there have been several distinct approaches to the raising of a new ecological consciousness, this new research will provide a case study on the strengths and weaknesses of a combined ethnographic-artist approach that could have wide application in other EU member states, including Ireland, thus informing future ecomusical research and interventions on a larger European scale.
Bio
I compose music and sound works for synthesiser and computer that explore emptiness and emergence, of self and of machine. Theey are informed by my experience composing, performing, and presenting works across the gamut of Minimalism. These works place timbre under the microscope; examining fine details of sound over extended durations. Informed by intuitive use of feedback, chaos and chance, these sounds are simultaneously static, yet always in motion. I perform extensively on the international experimental music scene, and my work is released on a number of independent labels.
Research Proposal
Synthesisers are conventionally considered as tools utilised to generate broad sonic paletes by simply executing the instructions of the composer (or operator) in a lead/follow relationship. This research investigates the potential of considering the synthesiser and operator as a dyad or duality in which both have creative agency. Synthesisers are musical tools rich with potential as nodes of a network: they are dense webs of interactions with themselves, the operator and a listener. This practice-led research will develop an ecology of compositional practice for synthesiser in which musical trajectories and meaning will show themselves through emergent processes and the reciprocal relationship between operator and instrument. The resulting portfolio of works will employ methods of mapping creative practice such as Nodalism (Adkins 2014) and Flocking (Cascone 2005) to minimalist and drone-centric forms of electronic music in which timbral development and examination is prioritised. By considering the affordances (Kruger 2014) of the instrument, and the works produced, the portfolio will contribute to the sphere of experimental electronic music by inverting Cybernetic and generative approaches. Self-organising and chaotic methods of patching the synthesiser will be applied specifically to these musics, rather than any minimal or sustainted-tone style being the result of such methods.
Bio
I am originally from San Francisco, California. In June 2020, I completed my Honours BA in English and minors in Spanish and History at Union College, Schenectady, New York. I then obtained a First-Class Honours MA degree in Irish Writing and Film (English) from UCC in April 2022, beginning comparative research on the urban modernist poetry of Puerto Rican Julia de Burgos and Irish American Lola Ridge. I also obtained a First-Class Honours MA in Global Security and Borders from Queen’s University Belfast in October 2022, writing my dissertation on the variety of Irish national women’s narratives from the revolutionary period. As I begin my English doctorate at UCC this year, I return to Ridge and de Burgos, widening my focus to consider their identities as diasporic and transnational poets.
Proposal
A shared Atlantic colonial history shaped the poetry of modernist poets Lola Ridge (1873–1941), an Irish-American socialist poet, and Julia de Burgos (1914–1953), a national poet of Puerto Rico. The two women were divided by languages and cultures but shared interests in the ocean, urban immigrant America and Christian mysticism. From their different locations, they addressed issues of injustice and inequality as experienced in American, Caribbean, and Irish contexts. As a translingual decolonial scholar, I consider their overlapping modernist poetics within a diasporic, postcolonial, transnational, and translational framework, employing geocultural analysis of the interactions between the U.S., Ireland, and Puerto Rico. As diasporic, transnational individuals moving between different literary traditions and national contexts, both Ridge and de Burgos perform acts of self-translation on their poetry. As a bilingual poet, de Burgos engages with a further layer of translation moving from her majority Spanish-language poetic career to write her final two poems in English and in an anglophone poetic style. She also engaged in translation professionally, working as a translator for the United States government during WWII. I will put the monolingual, diasporic Ridge in conversation with the translingual, diasporic de Burgos while producing my own translations of de Burgos’s Spanish poetry.
Bio
Robyn McAuliffe is a PhD student in UCC’s School of English. Having completed a BA in English in University College Cork in 2020, Robyn was awarded a CACSSS Excellence Masters Scholarship and completed a Masters by Research in 2021. During her undergraduate, Robyn was awarded the Louise Clancy Memorial Prize for her undergraduate dissertation on the use of rape as a literary device in Old English hagiography. She is currently the OMR officer for UCC’s English Literature Society and the organiser of UCC’s Inkwell: Medieval to Renaissance Symposium.
Research Proposal
Robyn’s research primarily focuses on representations of gendered violence in early-medieval literature. Having completed two research projects analysing the gendered nature of virginity and violence in Old English hagiography, Robyn is currently engaging in a cross-cultural and cross-genre analysis of gendered violence in Old English and Old Norse literature. This analysis will compare representations of gendered violence in three popular genres of the Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic traditions, namely hagiography, heroic poetry, and medieval romance. It will also analyse the medieval legacy in contemporary screen media, specifically the fetishisation of gendered violence in TV and film adaptations/reinterpretations of the medieval past.
Bio
Originally from California, Josh spent several years working as a writer and theatre producer in Missoula, Montana. He earned his Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. Currently, Josh resides in County Kerry where he has traded indoor workspaces for a forest-based studio, pursuing a doctoral degree in artistic research.
Proposal
The twenty-first century has rallied ecofeminist, posthumanist, and performance theory to the disruption of anthropocentric cultural dominance. Part of this work has involved shifting non-human animal and vegetable life from the background to center stage. At the same time, other theorists have challenged the limitations of modernist approaches to loss and bereavement established primarily by Freud. Little research exists at the intersection between these topics however, particularly at a juncture of critique and practice. This project explores how entangling a posthuman work of mourning with a forest-based creative practice can challenge anthropocentric perspectives and sustain grief’s latent energies to reorient human/non-human relationships by affecting a transduction from personal to ecological bereavement. My work will use a loosely iterative practice of somatic improvisation to research the animating, empathetic, and disruptive affects experienced in traumatic, irreversible loss and their capacity to catalyse transformation in ecological perceptions, attitudes, and (ideally) behaviours/praxis.
Bio
I am a native of Blackrock. I am currently Principal at South Lee Educate Together National School, a new school which opened in 2019. Prior to this I was Principal at Sundays Well Boys National School since 2015, having taught there since 2009. I hold a BA in Economics and Geography and a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Economics from UCC. Also a Postgraduate Diploma in Primary School Education and a Postgraduate Diploma in Educational Leadership. I am a Director of the Young Knocknaheeny Area Based Childhood Programme where I first became interested in the area of Wellbeing and social and emotional regulation which are major themes in my research.
Research Topic
My research is a sequential exploratory mixed methods study which aims to reconceptualise wellbeing in the Irish Primary school system to encompass 4 domains. Drawing on Ontario’s Ministry of Educations’ depiction of wellbeing, I feel that in a primary school, the four domains of wellbeing should include:Social and Emotional Wellbeing, Physical Wellbeing and Cognitive Wellbeing (Hargreaves et al, 2018, p.40). Digital Wellbeing. Also to develop a culturally relevant Irish primary school ecological framework using Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory as a guide.
My thesis will contain three distinct stages of research.
- It analyses policy documents prepared in the development of the published wellbeing strategy as well as investigating the strategy itself.
- Local data will be gathered to support existing policy and research on Wellbeing in Primary Schools. This will entail qualitative data collection through semi-structured interviews and focus groups with students, parents, teachers and school principals. This is intended to reflect: (a)The Student Voice. (b)The Teacher Voice. (c) The Parent Voice. (d) The Views of School Leaders.
- Based on Data collected, an ecological model for wellbeing will be developed for the Irish Primary School context. I will then pilot this model across 3 Irish Primary Schools and evaluate it to generate my conclusions.
Bio
Max Darby is a Data Scientist with Musgrave. Max’s primary area of research relates to the intersection of artificial intelligence and human value-systems. Following his BA in Digital Humanities, in which he used artificial neural networks to explore philosophical theories, Max continued his interdisciplinary research in his Masters by proposing an evolutionary account for how artificially intelligent systems will develop in the same way that religions did, using similar behavioural, biological and cultural mechanisms. He is a proponent of responsible AI in industry and academia, and works primarily to ensure AI systems reflect the values of the people that use them.
Research Topic
Max’s research topic addresses two related issues in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Firstly, he aims to address what (if any) value systems that AI systems endorse, if not specifically optimised toward particular objectives. This will analyse how prescribed action from an AI system could potentially shape human behaviour (and subsequently, culture), if not aligned to existing human values. Secondly, he aims to research how to quantify and evaluate the value system that an algorithm has adopted, by examining the algorithm itself, not the results it generates. In this sense his research will explore grounds on which a human could refuse moral advice from a (potentially) super-intelligent system, answering the question: ‘Could it become impossible/culturally unacceptable to refuse moral advice from a system with superior intelligence?’. These two aims will contribute to an overall objective of creating AI systems that are configurable to human-interpretable value systems, which will provide a practical and conceptual framework for human/AI value-alignment.
Bio
Tadhg Dennehy is a PhD student in Film and Screen Media. Tadhg holds an MA in Creative Documentary from the University of Edinburgh and a BA in English and Sociology from UCC.
Proposal
Tadhg’s current research, under the supervision of Dr. Barry Monahan, is focused on cinematic representations of the Northern Irish conflict. Central to this research is the assertion that visual media are the primary mechanisms for the transmission, construction, revision and, ultimately, the shaping of history. Cinema offers the basis for an alternative history; a space to discover a reality that is not immediately visible to the geographically removed spectator. The reality of the Northern Irish conflict was announced to the world with the broadcasting of images from Derry of police brutality at a civil rights march on the 5th of October, 1968. At this time and subsequently, images were carefully managed, censored and propagandised with mechanisms that became familiar (and sometimes unique) tropes, codes and conventions of the representations of that conflict. This research will consider the peculiarities of fiction cinema, documentary and news reportage in creating a specific audio-visual lexicon in the historical reconstructions of the Northern Irish narrative. It is not my aim to argue for the existence of one true mediation of the conflict on screen. Rather my research will involve the close analysis of a number of inter-related cinematic representations dialectically against one another.
Bio
Daniel Fraser is a writer and researcher from Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire. He holds a BA (hons) Philosophy from University of Leeds and MA in Modern European Philosophy from the CRMEP Kingston, University of London. His principal research interests are: European literature and poetry, the failure of language, Marx/Marxist philosophy, and cinema. His poems, essays, and fiction have won prizes and been published widely in print and online including: London Magazine, New World Writing , LA Review of Books, Aeon, Mute, Dublin Review of Books, and Radical Philosophy. His poetry pamphlet 'Lung Iron' is published by the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre.
Research Proposal
My research examines traumatic temporality and crisis in post-1945 European Literature through an encounter with contemporary philosophy, with particular focus on: Paul Celan, Marguerite Duras, and Samuel Beckett. Primarily a work of critical theory, the project seeks to interpret the broken, fragmentary forms of literature which emerged after the events of the Second World War, in the shadow of the Holocaust and nuclear atrocities in Japan, through a philosophical concept of trauma as a temporal register of untimeliness. In doing so, the project relates the crisis of artistic expression, a crisis of language, and crisis of historical experience, a crisis of capitalism, drawing on Marx, and the critical theory/philosophy of time in the work of Peter Osborne, Theodor Adorno, and Catherine Malabou. At its core the research investigates to how literature negotiates these dual crises, what kinds of historical experience are precipitated by such writing, and to what extent they might open up ways of thinking other modes of being, and opportunities for 'working through the past'. The research builds on the trauma studies work of Ulrich Baer, Cathy Caruth, and Rebecca Comay, re-asserting the productivity of an interdisciplinary philosophical perspective for cultural interpretation and for understanding questions of trauma/history.
Bio
Sara Kelleher is a Social Work Ph.D. student in the School of Applied Social Studies at University College Cork. After receiving her Master of Social Work (MSW) from New York University, Sara earned her clinical social work license in the U.S. specializing in mental health and worked in the field for thirteen years. She is interested in the effects repeated exposure to trauma can have on those in helping professions, and in studying effective ways to support these workers. Her current research focuses on Secondary Traumatic Stress among Irish mental health social workers and testing interventions that may prevent or mitigate its effects. Sara is registered with CORU.
Proposal
Mental health providers who treat victims of trauma are frequently exposed to intense and powerful accounts of traumatic experiences. There is a growing awareness that such repeated vicarious exposure to trauma may lead providers to develop a cluster of psychological symptoms commonly referred to as Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS). STS can cause a variety of short- and long-term disorders in providers, impacting worker well-being and increasing the likelihood that providers will leave the field prematurely. Social workers involved in front-line mental health care are particularly vulnerable to developing STS. For my Ph.D. project, I will conduct a critical, comprehensive review of existing literature on STS theory, research and interventions, examining our current understanding of the nature and causes of STS and exploring how organizational and individual factors may influence practitioners’ vulnerability to developing STS and their resilience in recovery. My research will also explore factors that insulate practitioners from developing STS and possible prevention interventions. This study of Irish mental health social workers and STS will measure the prevalence of STS and its impact upon this group, including potential predictors and protective factors. Finally, guided by the results of the literature review, I will choose and test an intervention that may prevent or mitigate the effects of STS.
Bio
I have worked in the field of Intellectual Disability for over 15 years; across a range of frontline, Management and Senior Management Roles within Irish Section 38 Disability Providers. Currently, I work in a Senior Management Quality & Development post within the Brothers of Charity Services Ireland- Southern Region.
As an avid believer in lifelong learning and an advocate for quality improvement, I have continued to enhance my education across my career. To date I have achieved a BA in Psychology, a MA by Research, a PG Diploma in Positive Approaches to Challenging Behaviour and a Higher Certificate in Applied Management for Human Services.
Research Topic
The title of my research is: Preserving Quality of Life for Irish Adults with Mild to Moderate Intellectual Disabilities during and Post COVID 19 Using a Participatory Action Research Approach: A Longitudinal Review of Experiences throughout Crisis and Recovery.
This Employment Based PHD programme enables a unique opportunity to overlap my primary working role and strategic interest with an extremely topical academic focus; which can significantly build my expertise in rights based theory and allow for shared learning across the Intellectual Disability (ID) sector (leading to quality enhancement for those availing of services). The unprecedented phenomenon of Covid 19 has sparked a rich platform to collect data on the experiences of intellectually disabled people; as great momentum prior to the pandemic has been driving a rights based approach marked by normalised community engagement, as is the vision of a social model. All of which has been challenged by public health restrictions aimed at supressing the virus. As such, my proposed longitudinal research aims to explore the current, medium and longer-term impacts of COVID 19 on the quality of life of mild to moderate adults with ID availing of services from Disability Providers in the Republic of Ireland.
Bio
This year I moved from London to start my PhD in Sociology and Philosophy at UCC. I am researching issues of autonomy and deterritorialisation in relation to stateless peoples. After achieving a first-class degree at Aberystwyth University in International Politics, I obtained a master’s degree in Legal and Political from UCL. I spent the last couple of years working at a legal directory and with Extinction Rebellion in London, before being accepted into this research programme as an Excellence Scholar.
Research Proposal
My project considers the need for Rohingya people to exercise a model of non-territorial autonomy in order to encourage their leadership in finding solutions to their situation. Through qualitative media, document and interview analysis, I will assess the Rohingya people’s present dissociation from territory, their current lack of autonomy as stateless and displaced people, whilst identifying their coherence as a recognisable people. Through a perspective of deterritorialisation, as associated with Deleuze, this research will benefit from a dynamic lens, asserting a fluid conception of Rohingya, particularly in relation to land. Whilst recognising present dissociation from territory, this lens aims to account for a dynamic relationship referencing social and contextual developments. The Rohingya crisis is concurrent with the destabilising rise in statelessness. The continued deterioration of climate and ecological conditions, and increasing prevalence of uninhabitable territory, poses the urgent need for a revised set of rules around territory. It is essential that peoples most affected by these worsening conditions are included in discussions. To avoid a future where only those who presently own territory have a say in this reordering of territorial systems, a framework to enhance the leadership of stateless peoples, such as the Rohingya, ought to be conceived.
Bio
Melissa Shiels attended UCC as a mature student and completed her Bachelor of Arts degree (History Major). As an undergraduate, she was awarded a Quercus scholarship, Student of the Year from the School of History, as well as the Mansion House Prize from the NUI, the John A. Murphy Prize for Best BA Dissertation, and the MacCurtain Cullen Essay Prize from the Women's History Association of Ireland
She is a Heritage Expert on the Heritage in Schools panel, visiting national schools all over Ireland and supporting the national school curriculum by bringing history to life through presenting costumed history demonstrations.
Research Proposal
This research will expand the converging studies of material culture, Irish cultural expressions, and Irish social and political actors in the wider definitions of Renaissance phenomenon. Recent scholarship has widened the net to include aspects of material culture as evidence for Irish participation in the Renaissance and the expansion of Irish cultural expressions. Cultural historians have studied the rise of fashion, the critique and regulation of clothing, and the role of apparel in the formation of the Renaissance theatre of power. Likewise, the study of the elevation of ritualised gift-giving in Renaissance Courts has shed light on the ways in which diplomacy and politics were negotiated. This research will explore the intersection of clothing and gift-giving for political ends in the Tudor conquest of Ireland. Crucially, examining formal and informal gift exchange between Irish female political actors and the Crown reveals elite Irish women’s strategies to secure dynastic protection and promotion for their natal and marital dynasties, shedding light on the heretofore overlooked extent of women’s influence and participation in international politics. Strategically given gifts of apparel in sixteenth century political intrigues are a useful lens through which to examine the competing ideologies of the Crown and Irish political actors.
Bio
Maeve holds a BA in Archaeology and History and an MA in Archaeology from UCC. She joined the National Museum of Ireland in 2001 as a curatorial researcher on the Unpublished Burials Project. Since 2004, as Assistant Keeper in the Irish Antiquities Division, she has engaged in a wide range of curatorial tasks including fieldwork and excavation, lecturing and outreach. Maeve was appointed Keeper of Irish Antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland in July 2017, taking responsibility for the Museum’s archaeological collections. Maeve’s interests are in the early medieval and Viking collections and in the archaeology of death and burial in Ireland.
Research Topic
The study for which the Scholarship was awarded will focus on the archaeological evidence for the practices of feasting and dining in early medieval Ireland through an analysis of a range of vessel types. The corpus to be examined includes copper-alloy bowls and basins, decorative wooden pails, ladles, strainers and drinking horns. While there have been studies of individual artefacts within this group, this will be the first time that this body of material has been examined collectively. This thesis will primarily focus on the function and use of these high status vessels in a secular context by the wealthier classes in Ireland. The use of these vessels in a liturgical context will also be examined, given the fact that some have been found on, or close to, ecclesiastical sites, such as Derrynaflan, Co. Tipperary. The third main aspect of the thesis will be a discussion of the occurrence of these vessels in Viking-age graves in both Ireland and Britain and in Scandinavia, principally Norway. This study will result in the first catalogue of an important category of early medieval objects and will provide the first comprehensive account of feasting material culture in early medieval Ireland.