Caoimhe Whelan

PhD Student

Biography

I completed a BA Joint Honours in History and English at University College Cork, and then took an MA in ‘Medieval and Renaissance: Text and Contexts’ in the School of English of University College Cork. My thesis focused on history, language and identity in the Auchinleck manuscript. I am currently pursuing a PhD in the department of history at Trinity College Dublin under the supervision of Seán Duffy, examining the history of the Hiberno-Middle English English Conquest translation of Giraldus Cambrensis’s Expugnatio Hibernica and putting this underexplored text in its literary, social and historical contexts while tracing the development of identity and nationhood in Ireland in the late medieval and early modern period.

Research

My research explores how texts are translated and altered and how narratives can be adapted and retold in order to present a certain view of the past to late medieval or early modern readers. I am interested in how this can inform their views of the present in colonial Ireland with regard to nationhood and identity formation. More generally, my research interests include colonial Ireland, medieval Dublin, medieval and early modern historiography in Middle English and Hiberno-Middle English as well as early modern literature in Ireland. Thematically, I am interested in examining notions of translation, genre, and nation formation in English in the late medieval to early modern period.

Awards / Funding

• College Scholar, University College Cork: 2007, 2008 and 2009
• CACSSS (College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences UCC) - funding for MA thesis
• IRCHSS Postgraduate Funding
• IRCHSS Daniel O’Connell Scholarship Award in Irish History 2012