Susie Deedigan

Susie is a historian of gender and modern Ireland. 

Her research interests include gender, imprisonment, labour, activism and associational culture in Ireland North and South.

Her doctoral research adopted an innovative comparative approach to exmaine women’s experiences of political imprisonment in both parts of Ireland during the Second World War for the first time.

She has a forthcoming publication on Protestant women’s activism during the Irish Civil War, following on from her membership of member of the AHRC network Women and Grassroots Activism in Britain and Ireland. 

Additionally, she has a forthcoming co-authored publication on the formation of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition.

She obtained her PhD in History in 2024 from Queen’s University, Belfast. Her doctoral research examined female political imprisonment across the island of Ireland during the Second World War.

During her doctoral training she was awarded a visiting student fellowship at the Institute of European Studies at UC Berkeley. Prior to this, she read History (BA Hons) at Balliol College, Oxford before gaining an MPhil in Modern Irish History from Trinity College, Dublin.

She has lectured on twentieth-century Irish and European history and taught widely.

She was elected Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2025 and is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

She is a member of the British Academy Early Career Network, sits on the Executive Committee of the Women’s History Association of Ireland as Early Career Officer and is a member of the Irish Association for Professional Historians.

She also holds a PGCE in English and previously taught at Secondary and FE level.

Throughout her PhD she worked in QUB Special Collections and Archives, including as a research assistant on the Modern Political Collections Project curating collections related to the Northern Ireland conflict and peace.

She is currently Programme Manager for the ARINS Project. ARINS is a joint research initiative of the Royal Irish Academy and the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Based in the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at the Queen's University of Belfast, she manages activities, events, and research relating to the ARINS project and liaises closely with the project partner institution, the Royal Irish Academy.