Alison Garden is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at Queen’s University, Belfast. From 2016-2018, Alison was an Irish Research Council Fellow in the School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin, where she was previously a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities Institute (2015-2016). Prior to this, she was a Visiting Scholar in American Studies at Northumbria University and Glucksman Ireland House, New York University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar. Alison is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Alison's interdisciplinary research engages with the literature and culture of the long twentieth century, sitting at the critical intersection between sexuality studies, memory studies and postcolonial theory. She has particular interests in: migration, diaspora and the postcolonial Atlantic; haunting, intertextuality and memory; and the afterlives of (bio)political violence.

Her first book, The Afterlives of Roger Casement, is forthcoming with Liverpool University Press. Her criticism, essays, reviews and interviews have been published in Modernism/modernity, Comparative American Studies, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, The Irish Times, the Guardian, RTÉ and elsewhere.

Alison's current research project explores the theme of 'Love Across the Divide' in Literautre and Culture from the north of Ireland from 1968-present. There is a long tradition of depicting Ireland’s difficult relationship with Britain as a frustrated and dangerous romance between lovers from ‘opposing sides’. In the latter decades of the twentieth century, as the euphemistically named ‘Troubles’ escalated in violence and terror, these types of stories became increasingly common.

Looking at a range of poems, novels, plays, films and TV programmes, this project asks why the trope is so prevalent; how we might understand it; and why no one has taken these love stories seriously before now. As we approach the centenary of Partition and the prospect of a return to a post-Brexit hard border, these questions are more timely and urgent than ever. 

Alison contributes to:

ENG1002: Introduction to Contemporary Fiction (first year undergraduate class);

ENG2081: Irish Literature (second year undergraduate class);

ENG7305: Irish Poetry (MA class)

She also runs the third year option course, ENG3187: Love Across the Divide: Northern Irish Literature and Culture 1968-Present.

Alison is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy.