Professor Eve Patten

My research covers modern Irish and British literature, specifically prose and cultural history. In this field, I have influenced high-level interdisciplinary research by pioneering dynamic new critical strategies, leading directional change in postcolonial and transnational theory, and illuminating the socio-economics of publishing history.

First, I have spearheaded a rigorous interdisciplinary research methodology that productively aligns Irish literary culture with adjacent discourses of economics, journalism, and law. This modernising approach " widely praised in my 2004 Samuel Ferguson and Nineteenth-Century Ireland-- has shifted nineteenth-century Irish Studies towards a holistic intellectual history. I have also led new directions in internationalising twentieth-century Irish Studies. The positioning introduction to my edited Irish Literature in Transition (2020) has been described as `seminal" (Review of Irish Studies Europe, 2023) in re-defining transnational Irish literary theory and my monograph, Ireland, Revolution and the English Modernist Imagination (2022) applauded for a `compelling" argument that persuasively recalibrates postcolonial readings of Anglo-Irish literary relations (Modern Fiction Studies, 2024). My extensive published research on Irish fiction has successfully illuminated the politics of the novel, particularly in post-1970 Northern Irish culture, and my research initiatives in Ireland"s cross-border culture have gained wide international attention, from my organisation of the Partition and its Legacies conference (May 2021) to leadership of the research project Ireland"s Border Culture (2024), for which I secured HEA-Shared Island funds of €200k.

Secondly, my research has decisively advanced trans-European approaches to modern Irish literature. In several influential publications I encourage departure from `nation-bound" literary history towards transnational critical practice attentive to European post-imperial contexts. My 2012 monograph on novelist Olivia Manning in the political-diplomatic milieu of wartime Europe conveys the value of this realignment: in particular, critics have applauded its ethical attention to the European refugee as a `sensitive" and `timely" intervention in literary history (TLS; Irish Review 2014). My focused research on the continental momentum of modern Irish writing has seeded compelling new work on Irish writers and Europe, evidenced by a strong cohort of Phd supervisees now published in this area, and by scholarly initiatives ranging from my co-edited volume Ireland, West to East (2013) to the 2022 online series Visions of Europe in Irish Cultural Debate, awarded DFA `Europe at 50" funding.

Thirdly, my research has convincingly elevated the socio-economics of Irish publishing history, from my co-ordination of the 2012 International Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing conference and the high-profile volume The Perils of Print Culture (2014) to serving as co-PI on the online Poetics of Print exhibition, TCD 2019. In this research I have also partnered with an AHRC network collaboration (2015) on Irish-Scottish publishing connections, secured €100k IRC Enterprise Partnership funding for postdoctoral research on Ireland"s private libraries (2019), and co-led (with the Royal Irish Academy) the 2022-4 NORF Publish-OA report on Scholarly Open Access Irish Publishing.

Together, these significant research trajectories exemplify my authority, impact, international reputation and proven leadership in modern Irish and British literary studies over the course of my career to date.