Current Research Students

Name: Alan Armstrong

Email: armstral@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr. Brendan O'Connell

Thesis Title: The Ethics of Wealth in Late Medieval Alliterative Verse

Projected Completion: 2026

Funding: Trinity College Dublin Non-Foundation Scholarship

Background: B.A. in History and English, Trinity College Dublin (2021)

Research keywords: Alliterative Poetry, Medieval Literature, Middle English, Historicism, Romance, Wealth

Name: Alice Dei

Email: deia@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Dr Rosie Lavan

Thesis Title: Demonising Unruly Bodies: The Issue of Female Fatness in the Contemporary Cultural Imaginary

Projected Completion: 2030

Funding: Research Ireland

Research keywords: Comparative literature, cultural studies, Fat Studies, Anglophone Literature

Name: Amanda Dunne

Email: dunnea29@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr Pádraic Whyte

Thesis Title: Early Adolescence in Modern Irish Children's Literature

Projected Completion: September 2028

Funding:  TRDA

Research keywords: early adolescence, children's literature, young adult literature, Irish children's literature, identity formation, narrative voice, neuroscience of adolescence, psychology of adolescence 

Name: Aoife McMorrow

Email: mcmorrao@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Dr Julie Bates

Thesis Title: Sounding Beckett: tracing Beckett’s musical circles in Paris to contemporary composers

Projected Completion: 2030

Funding: TRDA

Research keywords: Samuel Beckett; John Cage; Melanie Daiken; Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil; Irish Writing; Modernism; Experimental Music; Feminist Restorative History

Name: Arianna Locoteta

Email: locoteta@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Dr. Mark Faulkner, Dr. Elisabetta Magnanti

Thesis Title: A Computational Approach to Abbreviation Patterns: Using Digital Philology for a Better Localisation of Early Medieval Insular Manuscripts 

Projected Completion: September 2028

Funding: Trinity Research Doctorate Award: Group-Based Project "Wandering Books" 

Background: M.Phil. in Medieval Studies at Trinity College Dublin (2022-23, First Class Honours); B.A. in Foreign Languages and Literatures at Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna

Research keywords: Medieval Abbreviations, Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR), Computational Philology, Old English, Medieval Latin, Digital Humanities

Name: Benedetta Mormino

Email: benedetta.mormino@gmail.com

Supervisor: Dr. Alice Jorgensen

Thesis Title: The Sword as Agent and Sign of Postlapsarian Memory in Beowulf

Projected Completion: 2029

Funding: SUSI

Background: BA in English Literature at UCD; M. Phil. in Medieval Studies at Trinity College Dublin

Name: Brenda Romero

Email: romerob@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Eoin McNamee and Kevin Power

Thesis Title: Literary Slivers: Memoirs of Women in Tech

Projected Completion:  2025

Funding: N/A

Academic Background: MA, National University of Ireland in Galway, 2021. BSc, Technical Communications, Clarkson University 2006

Research keywords: Gender, Memoir, Games, Technology, Programming, Code, Women

Name: Caragh Maxwell

Email: camaxwel@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Eoin McNamee

Thesis Title: Women, Landscape, and Community in Post-Recession Irish Fiction

Projected Completion: 2029

Background: BA Hons. Writing and Literature, ATU Sligo (2021). MPhil. Creative Writing, Trinity College Dublin (2023).

Research keywords: Irish fiction, women's fiction, Irish literature, modern Irish literature, modern fiction, post-recession literature

Name: Celina Tran

Email: tranc@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Dr. Kevin Power

Thesis Title: We Who Came From The Sea - Literary Practice 

Projected Completion: 2028

Funding: Norwegian State Funding

Background: BA (Hons) in journalism from the University of Leeds (2020-2023), MPhil in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin (2023-24)

Research keywords: Diaspora, Language, Memory, Creative Writing, Publishing

Name:  Chelsea Chengxi Zhang

Email: zhangc6@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr. Sam Slote

Thesis Title: James Joyce’s ‘Other Wor(l)d’

Projected Completion: 2030

Background: M.Phil in Irish Writing, Trinity College Dublin (2025); M.Phil in Comparative Literature, Trinity College Dublin (2024); B.A. in English, Macau University of Science and Technology (2023)

Research keywords: James Joyce, Identity, Space, Language, Deconstruction

Name: Chiara Mastronardo

Email: mastronc@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Professor Christopher Morash 

Thesis Title: Archipelagic relations and the space of Islands’ Fiction: a comparative perspective of Ireland, Iceland, Taiwan, and Cuba

Projected Completion: 2026

Academic Background: B.A. (Hons) in Languages, Cultures, Literature and Translation – English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish from “La Sapienza” University of Rome (2015); M.Phil. in Chinese Studies from Trinity College Dublin (2018)

Research keywords: Irish literature, Island studies, islandness 

Name: Claire Poynton-Smith

Email: poyntonc@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr Mark Faulkner

Thesis Title: Tracking the language of sanctity across transitional English: an analysis of expressions of lust and chastity in English texts c.950-c.1250

Projected Completion: September 2024

Funding: Provost's PhD Project Award

Background: BA Hons English Language and Literature, University of Oxford (2012-2015); Postgraduate Certificate in Secondary Education with Distinction, University of Leicester (2015-2016); MA Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies, University of Nottingham (2018-2019)

Research keywords: Medieval literature; late Old English; early Middle English; twelfth-century English; Saints' Lives; gender; historical linguistics

Name: Conor Grimes

Email: grimesc1@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr. Mark Faulkner

Thesis Title: Mapping the Old English Saints' Lives

Projected Completion: 2028

Funding: Trinity Foundation Scholarship

Background: BA in English Studies and Linguistics, Trinity College Dublin, 2025; MSt in Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics, University of Oxford, 2026

Research keywords: Old English literature, Hagiography, Literary geography, Digital humanities, Medieval maps

Name: Elanur Eroglu Williams 

Email: eroglue@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr. Pádraic Whyte

Thesis Title: Beyond Borders: Identity, Memory, and Migration in Young Adult Graphic Memoirs

Projected Completion: 2030

Background: University of Pennsylvania, M.S.Ed. in Literacy Studies (2022); Trinity College Dublin, M.Phil. in Children's Literature (2021); Concordia University, B.A. in English and Creative Writing with a Minor in Sustainability Studies (2020); Certified K-12 reading specialist and teacher

Name: Elizabeth Oxley

Email: oxleyc@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Dr. Una Mannion

Thesis Title: Clothing the Ghost: The Self as Pure Imaginative Capacity in W.G. Sebald’s Vertigo and Claire-Louise Bennett's Big Kiss, Bye-Bye

Projected Completion: 2029

Academic Background: MPhil in Creative Writing, Trinity College Dublin (2023); BA in English, Georgetown University, Washington, DC (1999)

Research keywords: Autofiction; Autobiographical Fiction; Autobiographical Novel; Serge Doubrovsky; W.G. Sebald; Claire-Louise Bennett

Name: Ellen O'Connell Whittet

Email: eoconne6@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr. Kevin Power, Dr. Amy Prendergast

Background: MFA (Sarah Lawrence College), BA (University of California, Santa Barbara). Currently Continuing Lecturer in Writing at University of California, Santa Barbara. Author of Book of Hours (Dzanc, 2026), What You Become in Flight (Melville House, 2020). Co-editor of forthcoming anthology Family History (Mayo Clinic Press, 2028).  Father Sally is a novel forthcoming from St Martin’s Press.

Research keywords: autobiography, childbirth

Name: Eva Stenskar

Email: stenskae@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Dr Rosie Lavan

Thesis Title: Heimisch im Unheimlichen: Configurations of the Uncanny in the Works of Sylvia Plath

Projected Completion: 2027

Background:  BA, Comparative Literature – Lund University. MA, Comparative Literature – Linné University

Research keywords: the uncanny, das Unheimliche, space, home, things, Judeo-Christian imagery, metamorphoses, Ireland

Name: Fionn Andrews

Email: macaindf@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr Seán Hewitt / Dr Tom Walker

Thesis Title: The Afterlife of Larkin: Death, Duty & Poetics of the Ordinary in the Works of Dennis O'Driscoll / Working Debut Collection 'Everyday Life'

Projected Completion: 2030

Background: BSc Human Nutrition UCD (2021), MPhil Creative Writing TCD (2023)

Research keywords: Poetry, Larkin, O'Driscoll, Literary Practice

Name: Hannah Kohnen

Email: kohnenh@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Prof. Sam Slote

Thesis Title: Samuel Beckett’s Drama in the Light of Hegelian Thought

Name: Jane Loughman

Email: loughmaj@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr. Paul Delaney and Dr. Rosie Lavan

Thesis Title: Persona Non Grata: identity experimentation in the lives, writing, and publishing of Kate O’Brien and Barbara Pym

Projected Completion: August 2030

Funding: Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme - Research Ireland

Background: MSt in English (1900-Present), University of Oxford, 2022-2023. Double BA in English Studies, Dual BA Programme between Trinity College Dublin and Columbia University NYC, 2018-2022. Former programme manager at 2K Games Dublin, 2023-202

Research keywords: Kate O'Brien, Barbara Pym, persona studies, genetic criticism, genetic narratology, archives, digital humanities, Irish and British literature, 20th century literature, midcentury, identity, modern and contemporary literature

Name: Joanne Touhey

Email: touheyj@tcd.ie

Supervisor(s): Eoin McNamee and Julie Bates

Thesis Title: Beneath the Carpet: A Memoir, The Silence We Inherit, and a Critical Reflection on Trauma, Voice, and the Second-Person in Life Writing

Projected Completion: 2025

Funding: SUSI / Self-funded

Academic Background: BA in Social Care (Athlone Institute of Technology) 2018, MA in Writing (University of Galway) 2021, PgDip in Library and Information Management (Ulster University)

Research keywords: Memoir, Generational Abuse, Memory and Identity, Life Writing, Trauma, Narrative Perspective.

Name: Julian (Yuqi) Li

Email: LIY39@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Prof. Philip Coleman

Thesis Title: The Poetics of Form in the Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, Anthony Hecht, and Donald Justice 

Projected Completion: 2028

Funding: TCD-CSC

Background: BA English Language and Literature, Zhejiang University (2022); MA English: Issues in Modern Culture, University College London (2023)

Research keywords: modern American poetry; form; modernism

Name: Kathryn Mae Conrad

Email: kconrad@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr. Brendan O'Connell

Thesis Title: Chaucer’s Aviary Fortunes; Examining Birds through Classical Metaphor

Projected Completion: 2030

Background: MPhil Medieval Literature Studies, TCD, 2025; Bachelors of Arts English Literature, Texas State University, 2019

Research keywords: Chaucer, Auguries, Birds

Name: Kristen Poli

Email: polik@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Dr. Kevin Power & Dr. Una Mannion

Thesis Title: Anorexic Realism: Self-Starvation and its Critics in Contemporary Fiction

Background: M.Phil in Creative Writing, Trinity College Dublin (2023). M.S. Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University (2014)

Name: Liz MacBride

Email: emacbrid@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr. Kevin Power & Prof. Philip Coleman

Thesis Title: Within and Without: Reimagining the Irish Campus Novel

Projected Completion: March 2027

Background: BA English Studies, TCD (2019); MA Creative Writing, Royal Holloway, University of London (2020)

Research keywords: Irish campus novel, creative writing, post-Celtic Tiger, heterotopia, space and place, contemporary Irish fiction, polyphony, psychogeography

Name: Madeline Rose

Email: rosema@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr. Mark Faulkner

Thesis Title: A Computational Analysis of the Manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales

Projected Completion: 2029

Funding: Research Ireland

Background: M.Litt. in English, Trinity College Dublin; B.A. in Linguistics and English, University of Rochester

Research keywords: Manuscript Studies, Middle English, Chaucer, Digital Humanities, Computational Linguistics

Name: Maija Makela

Email: makelamm@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Professor Philip Coleman

Thesis Title: Fanny Howe's Poetics of Bewilderment

Projected Completion: 2028

Funding: Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship

Academic Background: BA English Studies, Trinity College Dublin (2020), Writer, Editor

Research keywords: Fanny Howe, Simone Weil, US American Poetry, Poetics, Negative Theology, Marxism

Name: Matthew James Hodgson

Email: hodgsonm@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Dr. Sam Slote

Thesis Title: Initial Transformations: the Mother, Gestation, and Baptism in the Work of James Joyce

Projected Completion: 2028

Funding: Self-funded

Background: M.Phil in Irish Writing, Trinity College Dublin (2023); M.A., University of Chicago (2020); B.A. Montana State University: Bozeman (2019)

Research keywords: Joyce Studies, maternity, gestation, transformation

Name: Michael Roderick

Email: rodericm@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Dr. Sam Slote

Thesis Title: '(Stoop) if you are abcedminded': James Joyce as Epicist of Print 

Funding: Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship (RI)

Background: BA Classics (Lit Hum) Oxford; MA Comparative Literature UCL; Teacher and Tutor 

Research keywords: Joyce Studies, Literature and Technology, Classical Reception 

Name: Molly Box

Email: boxm@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Professor Darryl Jones

Thesis Title: Eating Children: Fetishization of the Child Corpse in Victorian Comfort Books and Ghost Stories

Projected Completion: May 2028

Background: Bachelor of Journalism, Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles (2022); Master of Philosophy in Modern and Contemporary Literature Studies

Research keywords: Victorian mourning, Victorian spiritualism, Victorian consolatory literature, death customs, M.R. James, Henry James, Elizabeth Gaskell, Society of Psychical Research 

Name: Noa Shmueli

Email: shmuelin@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Prof. Chris Morash

Thesis Title: “That Marriage of Europe and Asia”: W.B. Yeats and the Middle East

Projected Completion: 2030

Funding: TRDA

Background: MPhil in Irish Writing, Trinity College Dublin (2026); BA (Hons) in English and Computer Science–Mathematics, Columbia (2025); BA (Hons) in English Studies, Trinity College Dublin (2025)

Research keywords: Yeats, Irish Orientalism, Middle East, Asia, mysticism, A Vision, Arabic, postcolonialism, Revival

Name: Rían Boyle

Email: boyleri@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr Mark Faulkner

Thesis Title: Counting Correctness: A Corpus Approach to Normativity in Old English Literature

Projected Completion: August 2026 

Funding: Research Ireland

Background: B.A. in English Studies (Trinity College Dublin 2016-20), M.Phil. in Medieval Language and Literature (Trinity College Dublin, 2020-21)

Research keywords: Old English, Old English Literature, Social Norms, Corpora, Corpus Linguistics, Digital Humanities

Name: Rosemary Hennigan

Email: hennigr@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Dr Una Mannion and Dr Paul Delaney

Thesis Title: Precarity, dispossession, and the ‘Big House’ genre in Irish contemporary literature

Projected Completion: 2029 

Background: LL.B (Trinity College Dublin, 2011); LLM (University of Pennsylvania 2017); Solicitor (Law Society of Ireland, 2015)

Research keywords: Dispossession; Precarity; Housing Crisis in Contemporary Irish Fiction

Name: Shey Pope-Mayell

Email: popemays@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Professor Jarlath Killeen

Thesis Title: Lord Alfred Douglas: The Uranian Years 1884-1911

Projected Completion: September 2028

Funding: Privately Funded 

Background: BA in English Literature and French - Victoria University of Wellington (2015-17). BA Hons in English Literature - Victoria University of Wellington (2018-19). MA in English Literature - Victoria University of Wellington (2019-20)

Research keywords: Lord Alfred Douglas, Uranian Poetry, Decadence, Aestheticism, Fin-de-Siécle, Hellenism, Greek Love, Pederasty

Name: Siúbhan O'Donnell

Email: odonns11@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr. Seán Hewitt

Thesis Title: "All of Queer Life is Stories": Irish Queer Literature and Lesbian Life in the late 20th Century

Projected Completion: September 2029

Funding: Research Ireland

Background: BA in English Literature and Classical Civilisation, Trinity College Dublin (2019) ; MRES in Security, Conflict and Human Rights, University of Bristol (2021)

Research keywords: queer literature, lesbian, reading groups, memory, archival silence, creative methodologies, queer methodologies

Name: Tess Finnegan Burchmore

Email: burchmot@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Dr Björn Quiring and Dr Tom Walker 

Thesis Title: Namelessness and Neurosis in the Novels of Flann O'Brien

Projected Completion: 2028

Background: BA in History, Anthropology, and Writing from Washington University; Masters in Library and Information Studies from University College Dublin

Research keywords: Jacques Lacan; Flann O'Brien; Myles na gCopaleen; Irish literature; namelessness; psychoanalysis

Name: Victoria Dickerson

Email: dickersv@tcd.ie 

Supervisor: Dr Seán Hewitt

Thesis Title: A Crumbling Foundation: Coming of Age in a Big House

Projected Completion: Spring 2028

Background: B.A. Journalism and Creative Writing, W&L University (2012); MPhil Creative Writing, Trinity College Dublin (2019-2020)

Research keywords: Irish Big House Literature, Estate Novels, Bildungsroman, National Identity, Irish Women's Fiction

Name: Yael Bassan

Email: bassany@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr. Ema Vyourbalova

Thesis Title: Rethinking Supernatural Representation: A Cognitive Reading of the Supernatural in Early Modern Italian and English Drama between 1530-1650

Projected Completion: 2026

Funding: Self-funded

Research keywords: Shakespeare, early modern English and Italian drama, supernatural, cognitive literature

Name: Zi Ye

Email: yez2@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Prof. Chris Morash

Thesis Title: Affective Geographies in Seamus Heaney's Poetry

Projected Completion: Spring 2030

Funding: TCD-CSC

Background: BA in English, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (2020-2024); MA in Literature and Modernity: 1900 to the present, The University of Edinburgh (2024-2025)

Research keywords: Place, Space, Seamus Heaney, Irish Poetry

Name: Ziyun Liu

Email:  liuz1@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Professor Andy Murphy

Thesis Title: The Dissemination and Reception of Works from the Irish Literary Revival in Republican China

Projected Completion: September 2024

Funding: 

Academic Background: BA in Editing and Publishing, BIGC (Beijing), MPhil in Textual and Visual Studies, TCD (Dublin)

Research keywords: Nationalism, Publishing History, Cultural Communication

Name: Zoe Patterson

Email: pattersz@tcd.ie

Supervisor: Dr Sam Slote

Thesis Title: Yes We Will Yes: Communal readership of James Joyce

Projected Completion: 2026

Funding: 1252 Postgraduate Studentship

Background: Bachelor of Arts (Literature and Creative Writing), Sarah Lawrence College (2020); MPhil in Irish Writing, Trinity College Dublin (2022)

Research keywords: James Joyce, literary communities, reading groups, book clubs, reception, Bloomsday