While I'm a historian by trade, I lecture in Liberal Arts at Queen's. I try to take an interdisciplinary approach to my research - bringing together material culture, urban studies approaches, and histories of emotion - so having the opportunity to work with colleagues from across different disciplines is brilliant! It also means that I can work with our wonderful students, who are studying wildly different pathways, to help them to draw themes together from across a variety of modules and approaches - and, as always, I also get to learn from them!

I am the Subject Lead for the M.Liberal Arts degree programme. This role has lots of different elements, including working with my colleagues to make Liberal Arts as wonderful and rewarding as possible. One of the big elements in this is convening Liberal Arts modules across different year groups. In the past, I have taught modules which cross my areas of research. Geographically, these have focused principally on Ireland, Britain, the British empire, and North America, while thematically they have largely been on social and urban history. In Liberal Arts, the modules I convene tend to ask big questions about the state of the world and the place of 'the arts and humanities' (however we're defining them) in society.

Modules (currently or previously) convened:

• LIB1001: Understanding Now 
• LIB2001: Uses of the Past
• LIB3001: Arts & Humanities in the Contemporary World
• LIB3003: Work Placement
• LIB7005: Migrating Identities

Current PhD Supervision:

• Conor Brockbank, 'A Growing Irish Transnational Carmel, 1926-1980' - primary supervisor.
• Joy McClean, 'Translating Vergangenheitsbewältigung: Giving Voice to Oppositional Memory Narratives in Northern Ireland' - second supervisor.
• Julie Mathias, 'Ireland's Lost Property: An Exploration of the Anatomy Trade in England and Ireland, 1832-1922' - third supervisor. 

Office Hours:

I am on sabbatical for semester 2 (this means I'm on research leave so won't be around as much). As such, if you do need to meet with me, please email me to arrange an appointment. My office is 01/005, 3 University Square. As the main door of 3 UQ is often locked, I recommend coming in through 2 UQ, up the first set of stairs and then through the connecting door, I'm just up the next set of stairs on the left.

I studied for my History undergraduate degree at the University of Exeter (with a short stint at Deakin University in Melbourne - one of many reasons I'm a big proponent of study abroad!) before moving to Dublin to study for my M.Phil in Modern Irish History at Trinity College Dublin. I then spent a year working in the engineering industry and a further year working in and consulting with museums as a freelance researcher. During my PhD at the University of Edinburgh I was a William McFarlane Fellow, working closely with the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies. My PhD (awarded 2017) looked at Irish communities in Melbourne and Chicago during the nineteenth century and was supervised by Professor Enda Delaney and Dr Niall Whelehan. Between January 2020 and June 2021, I was Teaching Fellow in Irish History at the University of Leicester. Prior to this, I was the Research Fellow on the Scottish Irish Migration Initiative based between the University of Edinburgh and University College Dublin, and have also lectured at Northumbria University, University of Edinburgh, University of Newcastle, and Strathclyde University.

Research Interests

I’m a social and cultural historian of Ireland and the Irish diaspora, with particular interest in gender, religion, and urban space. My research primarily focuses on the 19^th century though I am increasingly finding myself dragged into the 20^th. I am often intrigued about the ways that gender influences how people inhabit urban space and also how these spaces are shaped and imagined across different cities and countries. Approaching these places comparatively allows me to think about the similarities, differences, and connections across communities and families (of all shapes and sizes). 

Research Activities

• Irish identity in the diaspora: My work is comparative and uses case studies in the United States and Australia as well as in Ireland and Britain to more fully examine ethnic communities and the activities which bond people together - including education, sport, religion, and associational culture. My first book, Forging Identities in the Irish World: Melbourne and Chicago, c.1830-1922, was published with Edinburgh University Press in February 2022. In 2023, this book was awarded the Lawrence J. McCaffrey Prize for Books on Irish America by the American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS).
• Women (religious and lay) and the built environment: My next big project focuses on how women, particularly immigrant women, shaped their environments to facilitate a sense of belonging. Focusing primarily on women in Ireland and the Irish diaspora (in Britain and the United States) between 1800 and 1937 (when the Irish Constitution declared that a woman’s place was in the home), it takes an interdisciplinary approach to exploring women’s, often unseen, influences on the buildings they used. This connects with my wider interest in women religious (or nuns) in shaping identity and how people imbue buildings with their emotions.
• Mapping Belfast’s places of worship: I spend (possibly too much of) my spare time visiting, photographing, and mapping Belfast’s places of worship from before 1960 (very cool, I know). These buildings have been shaped by their congregations, by their surroundings, and frequently have had varied histories, congregations, and uses. As people move in and out of areas, their spaces of worship shift with them. You can find some of them on Instagram on @MappingBelfast.
• Histories of Emotion in the Built Environment (HEBE): I am a founding member of the HEBE research network. HEBE is committed to considering the ways that the history of emotions can help us to better understand the built environment. It aims to facilitate inclusive cross-sectoral discussions between and across discipline and practice. In doing so, researchers will reflect on the methodological opportunities and challenges of using emotional frameworks in the study of the built environment over the next five years. The HEBE network will run a series of seminars and events exploring these topics.

I am currently the Secretary of the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies and also run the Irish Diaspora Histories website. I was previously the Book Reviews Editor for the Australasian Journal of Irish Studies and sat on the council of British Association for Irish Studies.