Centre for European and International Studies Research (CEISR)

Profile

My PhD project evaluates the relationship between Ireland’s National system of education, introduced in 1831, and British imperialism.  I consider education’s relationship to the politics, religion and culture of the ‘Union’ period, and its role in shaping imperial and anti-imperial attitudes and discourses.  This involves a concentration on the ideologies, processes and practices of formal education that shaped and were shaped by imperial attitudes and values in order to understand the ways education was used as a means of disseminating and reinforcing particular cultural and political ideals.

My main academic interests focus on Irish literature, drama, and Irish educational history.  I am particularly interested in the intersections between cultural and political nationalisms in relation to Ireland’s ‘colonial’ period; 1800-1922.  I also have a more general interest in all areas of colonial/postcolonial discourse and the ways in which literature was used to sustain colonial authority within Imperial educational systems through the creation of justificatory discourses or ‘regimes of truth’.

Qualifications

• BA (Hons) English Literature, University of Portsmouth, 2005, First Class
• MA English, University of Southampton, 2008

Research Groups

• Cultural Values
• European Social Theory
• Language and Linguistics
• Nation and Identity
• Politics and Policy-making in Europe
• Social, Historical and Cultural Change in Europe
• Transnationalism in the EU
• Women's and Gender Studies
  

Discipline Areas

• Area Studies
• Cultural Studies
• History
• Language and Linguistics
• Literary Criticism
• Politics and Public Administration
• Social Theory
• Sociology
• Irish Studies
  

Current Research Projects

• PhD thesis ‘Being and Knowing in Colonial Space: The Irish Education Experiment 1800-1922’

Grants Received

• Dorothea Davis Scholarship 2002-03
• CEISR PhD Studentship, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Portsmouth, 2008