Bio

Shelley Etkin is a transdisciplinary researcher and educator as well as an artist, gardener and herbalist.  She has been a guest lecturer in the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of the Arts Helsinki. Shelley holds an MA in Ecology & Contemporary Performance, BA in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Proposal

'Herbologies of Repair' is an ethnobotanical research through archival and socially-engaged methodologies centering medicinal plants in Palestine-Israel as liberatory allies towards socio-ecological repair. The research articulates pedagogies of land stewardship and peace-building initiatives through multispecies justice frameworks and queer feminist decolonial epistemologies of intersecting ancestral herbal knowledges and practices. Engaging locally-rooted decolonial, queer feminist, ecological, and anti-zionist lenses, I ask how cultural encounters and collisions mediated through plants take place in this context. Recognizing the structural violence embedded into life on this land given the conditions of war, occupation and apartheid regimes, the research re-imagines particular local and culturally significant plants as allies, teachers, ancestors, witnesses, mediators, and healers in liberation, repair, and peace-building. The work departs from a re-reading of my grandfather's archive of medicinal plants, situating the research in my perspective coming from a Jewish-Israeli family from the land of historic occupied Palestine, while also in dialogue with Palestinian-led community organising on the ground through immersive field work in several key sites of socio-ecologies of change. This research maps 'medicinal encounters' in solidarity with processes of repairing injustices and harms to peoples and environments through emancipatory and embodied pedagogies, environmental ethnographies, eco-theologies, indigenous, and climate justice scholarship.

Bio:

I am a PhD student at the Department of Government and Politics. I am conducting research on public administration and cross-border cooperation. My research interests cover administrative autonomy and multimethod research designs. I hold BA and MA degrees in public administration from the University of Applied Sciences in Kehl.

Abstract:

Cross-border cooperation is increasingly gaining importance in the process of European integration and the mobility of people across national borders. My PhD project addresses this changing role of cross-border cooperation and focuses on the question of the autonomy of public administration in cross-border cooperation. The administrative level of cross-border cooperation can be described as the engine room of cross-border cooperation, where concrete technical, legal and procedural approaches are developed to remove border-related obstacles and exploit border-related potential. The concept of administrative autonomy captures the room for manoeuvre for actions of public administration as well as the ability to successfully use this room and pursuing own goals. By empirically analysing public administration in the border regions on the island of Ireland and on the Upper Rhine, my study aims to identify the factors that enable or hinder effective administrative cooperation. The results of this research aim to significantly improve our understanding of public administration in cross-border cooperation. The findings will not only enrich academic discussions, but also provide actionable insights for policy makers, potentially contributing to more resilient and effective border governance, facilitating cross-border mobility and European integration.

Bio

Cian Lynch is a PhD researcher in the School of History. Cian has previously earned a BA in History and Politics from UCC and an M.Phil in International History from Trinity College Dublin. He has previously been awarded the 2023 Universities Ireland History Bursary. Cian’s research is informed by an interest in International Relations, conflict and conflict resolution, maritime history, and contemporary military history. He currently tutors for UCC’s Skills Centre, Access Centre, and School of History as his passion is for helping his fellow students, and further serves as a member of the Reserve Defence Forces.

Proposal

Cian’s current research, supervised by Dr Jérôme aan de Wiel and Dr Andrew McCarthy, seeks to determine to what extent Irish agricultural exports to Great Britain were disrupted by Imperial Germany’s campaign of submarine warfare during the First World War. This research seeks to determine the significance Ireland had within Britain’s and Germany’s strategic calculations; how Ireland’s agriculture, fisheries, manufacturing, and shipping industries were impacted; and how Ireland was defended from the onslaught of submarine warfare. The agricultural focus of this study seeks to shed light on an important, but poorly understood, contribution that Ireland played in the Great War; Great Britain was dependent on imports for two-thirds of its foodstuffs and Ireland was the second greatest contributor, only after the United States. The importance of Ireland’s fields and waters as an important battleground in the effort to sustain the war effort has yet to be fully realised. Despite the colossal impact that Imperial Germany’s fleet of U-boats had in Irish waters, killing more than the Irish Civil War or War of Independence and devastating entire industries, the importance of Irish waters as the frontline of the First Battle of the Atlantic remains a fertile niche for exploration.

Bio

Brónagh Murphy is a PhD student in the Department of Archaeology under the supervision of Dr Barra O’Donnabhain. Brónagh earned her MSc in Forensic Ballistics from Cranfield University, UK in 2022 and an MA in Human Osteoarchaeology from UCC in 2023. Her current research aims to combine the fields of bioarchaeology, osteology, and forensic ballistics by examining the osteological trauma that results from ballistic weaponry. 

Proposal

Conflict and resultant trauma are undeniable realities of human existence and are entirely interwoven in human society, making it an essential field of study. Consequently, deepening our understanding of the relationship between conflict and trauma is relevant in contemporary forensic, archaeological, and historical settings, as evident in current affairs. Only some studies have examined early modern warfare, the impact of early ballistic weaponry, and its connections with current conflicts, leaving a gap to where the fields of osteology, forensic ballistics and early modern historical conflicts could contribute. In particular, there has been little attempt to trace developments in ballistics and to map these developments against osteological trauma. This research increases the understanding of weapons’ wounding effects by interpreting examined trauma and the available weaponry, drawing conclusions about the nature and evolution of warfare technologies and providing relevant insight into current affairs.

This project aims to research warfare technologies' nature, evolution, and impact and assess the resulting trauma, specifically on ballistic powdered weaponry, through osteological analysis of skeletal collections derived from conflicts between the 18th and 20th centuries. Through the study of osteological trauma, this project will provide a novel perspective into the technologies of war, their evolution, and their impact on the people and community as a whole in the available case studies.    

 Bio:

I am a current PhD researcher in the School of Applied Social Studies, beginning my PhD in October 2022. I have also previously achieved a BA (Hons) in Early Years and Childhood Studies, being awarded a Quercus College Scholarship in 2020; and Top Student Award in 2021. My research area is influenced by two main factors: firstly, my own identity as an autistic person and autistic researcher; and additionally, my previous experience as an early years practitioner, wherein the impacts of meaningful child participation on autistic children was highlighted. This has subsequently shaped my current research focus. 

Proposal:

The overall aim of this research is to explore autistic children’s experiences of participation in decision-making in Irish primary schools and to discern its subsequent impacts on children’s rapport with school staff and peers; alongside overall educational outcomes. Previous international research has indicated that autistic children report overwhelmingly negative experiences of schooling. Despite this, there is a limited yet growing field of knowledge which explores autistic children’s first-hand schooling experiences in the Irish context. This research intends to close the gap of knowledge which prevails and contribute to broader knowledge about autistic children’s lives and livelihoods.

Data will be collected using neuro-affirmative and inclusive research methods to permit in-depth and diverse understandings of autistic children’s educational experiences. This will be achieved through the creation and utilization of a participatory sensory toolkit of methods, including sensobiographic walking methods (Jarvilouma, 2009a); sensory art-based techniques (Huss, 2009a; Kara, 2015); and sensory ethnographic techniques (Pink, 2015).

It is anticipated that this research will contribute to both wider understandings of autistic children’s experiences of schooling and participation in decision-making, and enable the creation and utilization of more neuro-affirmative and child-friendly research methods.

Bio

Born and raised in Ukraine, I completed my high school education in the UK before relocating to the USA, where I obtained a BA in English and Spanish. I also hold an MS in Teaching French, English, and Foreign Literature, as well as an MA in Global Cultures and Languages. My experience includes teaching English in various countries. As a qualified trilingual researcher with a strong background in migration studies and qualitative research, I am confident that I possess the academic skills necessary to contribute meaningfully to research in the field of Applied Linguistics.

Proposal

This longitudinal qualitative study explores the development of language practices among 20 Ukrainian Temporary Protection Holders (UTPHs) in Ireland, focusing on how space impacts their engagement with the English language. The key research questions are: the role of space in UTPH language practices in Cork, barriers and facilitators to accessing English language spaces, the impact on investment in English language learning, and the effect on integration. The study recognizes UTPHs as a unique migrant category, differing from refugees in that they possess certain privileges but with temporary status. This precarious situation influences their spatial language practices, willingness to learn English, and integration efforts. The participants, who arrived within a short timeframe, were largely unprepared for migration, resulting in limited English skills. Using Benson's (2021) spatially-aware narrative approach, the study examines the interplay between language, space, and displacement. Data will be collected through four narrative interviews over a year, where participants map their language engagement in various spaces using physical or digital tools. This spatially-enhanced method aims to produce a web-based map via Google Maps API. Combining Applied Linguistics and Digital Humanities, the research offers new insights into migration, language practices, and integration, addressing a growing demographic concern.

Bio

Joy Uwanziga has over 16 years of working in the field of diplomacy and international organisations. Her books include ‘Manners in Rwanda’ (published in May 19th 2015 by InkwaterPress, a division of First Books in Portland, Oregon,USA) and ‘The Incredible Ways   of Parenting’(published in November 2018 by BookAgencyPlus, USA). She earned a Masters’ of Arts in International Protocol and Diplomacy from the ISPD in Brussels, Belgium. She’s currently a PhD student at the University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland. At the UCC Joy’s research is focusing on the social and political factors that influence continuous migration in the Great Lakes region of African societies in Rwanda and Uganda.

Proposal

Migrations are usually caused by a number of factors, and among them are; political unrests, civil wars, genocide, disease, and abject poverty. These situations have in no doubt led to mass migration of the people in the different parts of the world. In recent years, scholars, policy makers and development actors have become increasingly interested in understanding the role of migration in development. It’s believed that migrants can affect cultural change by transferring host-country cultural values and norms back to their home communities. The development challenges in the Great Lakes region have no doubt led to mass migration of the people within and outside the region. This research asks how has migration over past decades shaped Uganda and Rwandan societies and to what extent have these migration changed the hosts’ livelihood? The paper will use primary data collected from Uganda and Rwanda. It will contribute to debates in forced migration in Africa.The goal of this study is to investigate the role migration has had on the social and cultural development Rwanda and Uganda being the Case Studies. The project sets out to understand the role migration plays in influencing cultural and social development (rooted in the SDGs) among people affected by migration (directly and indirectly), including those who opted to stay.

Bio:
Vasileios is a PhD candidate in Music. He holds a MA in musicology from Uppsala University (Sweden) and a MA and BSc in music performance and musicology from Ionian University (Greece), a soloist diploma in Byzantine Music performance, a soloist diploma in Classical Guitar, and degrees in Fugue, Counterpoint and Harmony from his conservatory music studies in Greece. His musicological research interests are the theory, analysis, performance, and history of Byzantine and Western music, the music semiotics and the relation of music with language, as also the interdisciplinary approach of biomusicology. He also holds a PhD degree in Chemistry (University of Athens) and a MSc and BSc degree in Biotechnology (Agricultural University of Athens).

Proposal:
My research focuses on the study of vocables in Byzantine chant and is supervised by Dr. Alexander Khalil and Dr. Alexander Lingas. My aim is to: a) critically analyse the semiotic functions of vocables in Byzantine music in the Medieval period, in order to reveal which artistry, they served in Byzantine chant, and b) shed light on how the “irrational” character of the non-semantic singing in the Byzantine chant depicted semiotic notions of nature, emotional states, non-lexical meanings, etc. At a deeper level, the aim is to offer a new method for music analysis of this non-lexical singing. The relation of music and language has been well studied but the role of non-semantic language (non-language) to the evolution of music, has not been investigated thoroughly. There have been sporadically published research works on the topic of vocables in Byzantine music, but a comparative and comprehensive study has not been performed. Robust semiotic models for the analysis of the relation of non-lexical language and music, are lacking. The findings of the research are expected to enrich the topic and offer new insights to music analysis models for Byzantine music.

Bio:

Originally from Germany, I graduated in 2023 with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work in Dortmund, Germany, on identity change and desistance. In order to obtain my degree, I worked as a social worker in the JVA Werl, one of the biggest prisons in Germany located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. I then completed my MA in Criminology at UCC on lived experience support workers in the rehabilitation and reintegration after prison sector in Ireland. My interests are located within Critical Criminology and Criminal Justice Systems from a comparative perspective. 

Proposal:

My PhD research project will conduct a comparative ethnographic study of criminal courtrooms in Ireland and Germany with the aim of investigating how material, emotional and communicative structures and processes of the criminal courtroom impact different groups of people. The overall aim of my research is to embed these ethnographic observations of criminal courtroom experiences in a broader contextual analysis of two different legal systems of Germany and Ireland. My methodology will include sensory research methods to offer an in-depth understanding of the meaning that physical and symbolic spaces of punishment and justice hold for persons impacted by the criminal justice system. Interviews with courtroom defendants, legal professionals and others will help to further contextualise the analysis. My research wishes to contribute to critical criminology, which understands the courtroom as a site of performance of dominant ideologies and cultural norms.  I plan to provide a textured and nuanced comparative analysis of political cultures and their impacts on the realities and processes of sentencing, moving beyond limited rights-based analysis of access to justice and more.

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

James Dineen is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at UCC. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from UCC, and a degree in English and Classics from NUIG. He is currently developing a mythos, an integrated ‘mega-text’, whereby every fiction he writes operates within a much larger narrative inspired by ancient ideation. By way of a unique eschatology, his burgeoning ‘mega-text’ mythopoeia project depicts characters who, like his PhD novel's self-mythologising narrator, are in this world but not entirely of it.

Proposal

During a psychotic episode, a man fatally projects his pent-up anger onto his beloved dog. It is 1977 and, newly arrived at a state-care facility, he is drawn to the common room’s eclectic reading materials. Soon, the one-time all-day imbiber of liquor becomes an enthusiastic imbiber of ideas. When books bring him to an understanding of things which encompass much more than self-knowledge, over the course of a single evening, in mitigation of what went wrong, he sets down his mythology of self. The mystic Simone Weil (d. 1943), the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (d. 1926), and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (d. 1900), are amongst the most distinctive voices of the late-19th century and the first half of the 20th century. I will assess how a sense of personal failure was fashioned, by each of them, into a self-affirmation. I will investigate how they each placed their mythologies of self within the context of a wider cultural/historical narrative. My PhD project will add to the extant body of literature which explores how mythologies are created, why certain mythologies endure, the empowering and also the deleterious effect which self-mythologies can have on us as individuals.

Bio

Gabriella Fattibene (she/her) is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology & Criminology. Originally from the United States, Gabriella graduated Summa Cum Laude from Loyola University Maryland with a bachelor's degree in psychology and proceeded to University College Cork to receive a first-class honours master's degree in applied psychology. Gabriella worked as a research assistant in the Department of Sociology & Criminology, researching the far-right ecosystem in Ireland before pursuing her PhD. Her research focuses on far-right influencers on social media, especially the conspiracy theories and ideology they promote.

Proposal

Although the Irish far-right has been described as weak, disorganized, and non-threatening relative to other contexts, there has been a surge in far-right ‘influencers’ and rhetoric in Ireland over recent years. This project looks at far-right influencers on the video-hosting platform Odysee and their videos over December 2022 – August 2023 to examine far-right discourse in Ireland, namely how it is adapted and situated to the Irish context through the language of these far-right influencers. Analysis will utilize a pluralistic approach using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) and critical discourse analysis approach (Potter & Wetherell, 1987) to examine how far-right ideology and conspiracy theories are adapted to fit an Irish context. The aim of analysis is to understand how conspiracy theories spread and adapt, even in different political and cultural contexts. Examining the conspiracy theories that have gained traction among the Irish far-right, as well as the tactics used to disseminate them, is instrumental to preventing conspiracy theory contagion in the future.

Bio

Rojin Mukriyan (Fatemeh Mostafavi) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Government and Politics at University College Cork (UCC) , Ireland. She has obtained a BA and MSc from UCC after fleeing from Iran in 2014. For her BA, she double majored in Philosophy and Politics. She then obtained an MSc in Government and Politics from UCC with a thesis on the application of classical republican conceptions of domination and political liberty to the Kurds of Rojava (West Kurdistan). Presently, She is doing a PhD research project that is focused on a detailed analysis of jailed Kurdish political theorist, Abdullah Öcalan, and his conceptions of democratic confederalism and democratic civilization. Her main research areas are in political theory and Middle Eastern politics, especially Kurdish politics. So far, She has published articles in the Journal of International Political Theory, Philosophy and Social Criticism, and Theoria. Her publications have focused on the areas of Kurdish liberty, Kurdish statehood, and Kurdish political friendship. She has also published many think tank commentaries and reports on recent political developments in eastern Kurdistan (Rojhelat), or north-western Iran, at The Kurdish Peace Institute, The Kurdish Centre for Studies and the Mesopotamian Observatory of Justice.

Proposal

The aim of my project is to assess the coherence of Öcalan’s fundamental concept of ‘democratic civilization.’ It is this concept which has guided the political and cultural activities of the participants of the AANES. The first half of the dissertation aims to discover the theoretical background and presuppositions of Öcalan’s notion of democratic civilization, which has appeared throughout his more than 40 books and which serves as the organizing principle for his recent five book collection, the ‘Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization.’ By ‘democratic civilization,’ Öcalan means a kind of civilization wherein the institutional and material benefits that have accrued over the past 10-12,000 years are combined with a social order devoid of the multiple modes of hierarchy and domination that have characterized civilization thus far. A ‘democratic civilization’ would be one where peace and prosperity could be synthesized with certain kinds of egalitarianism specific to distinct social domains.

In politics, a democratic civilization would emerge through an active, participatory, and radical democracy roughly similar to the Swiss cantonal model of a directly democratic confederated republic. With respect to sex and gender, a democratic civilization would entail the complete overcoming of misogyny and patriarchy. In environmental terms, a democratic civilization would involve a social ecological approach to sustainability. Direct democracy, sexual equality, and social ecology are the three pillars of a democratic civilization, for Öcalan. What my project does in its first half is analyze how Öcalan argues for democratic civilization. The goal is to render explicit the metaphysical and theoretical conditions of possibility for democratic civilization that Öcalan often leaves implicit, while at the same time identifying where precisely he fits into the broader history and conceptual landscape of political theory. The point of such an endeavor is to clarify more precisely what the Kurds of Rojava are presently trying to accomplish with the AANES.

The second half of the project takes a more critical tone, but with the hope of remedying some of Öcalan’s inconsistences so to make the concept of democratic civilization more coherent and defendable. Öcalan is a kind of critical theorist, which means he is a social constructivist or idealist, an interactionist, a left-libertarian, and a normative realist. These tendencies lead Öcalan to insufficiently theorize the necessarily political nature of both democracy and civilization, which he treats in more cultural and moral terms. In the second half, my project counters Öcalan by offering a more politically realist and naturalistic conception of democracy and civilization by focusing on the concept of peoplehood. It is by properly theorizing peoplehood that one can thereby develop a conception of direct democracy that could truly overcome the domination inherent to civilization. If this on track, then it is by properly conceiving peoplehood that one could also provide the foundations for the sought-after equality in other social domains like sex and gender and the environment. A democratic civilization rooted in a realist and naturalist conception of the political and peoplehood would assist in the project of its creation and development.

Bio

Coran is an assistant principal and primary school teacher in Scoil Chill Ruadháin (Brooklodge National School) in Cork. In 2017, he received a Bachelor of Education from Mary Immaculate College (Limerick). In recent years, Coran completed both the PG Diploma in Educational Leadership and M. Ed. programmes at University College Cork. As a teacher and school leader, Coran has led the development of numerous initiatives and action research projects in his own school and other schools in Cork. These projects align with his primary research interests in coaching in education and professional learning. Coran has actively conducted research on educative coaching and presented the findings at multiple educational conferences.

Proposal

An international perspective on the development of coaching cultures in schools and the collaborative enactment of educative policy: A case study analysis

Though the positive benefits associated with coaching cultures in educational organisations abound, the intricacies of establishing them remain illusive and difficult to achieve. Through an interpretive and qualitative approach, this PhD research will draw upon the experiences of a national and international sample of school leaders to elicit the potential uses of coaching in Irish education. Utilising the Global Framework for Coaching in Education as a theoretical framework, this research will focus upon illuminating knowledge, experience, and practice related to coaching, particularly in the context of professional learning, exploring also the related areas of the student experience, educational leadership and wider-community engagement. To generate comprehensive data, this study will employ various research tools. Discourse analysis of key policy texts will provide valuable insights, while an immersive and thorough case study analysis will be conducted over a 12-month period. Semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and surveys will be employed intermittently during the case study analysis. This study's diverse and multi-contextual approach will enrich the research, enabling a comprehensive exploration of the various applications of coaching within Irish education. Moreover, this research will contribute to the increasingly collaborative posture of educational policymaking and promote coaching as a professional learning strategy in Ireland.

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

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

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

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

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.