Current Postgraduate Students
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Jacob Agee
Jacob completed his undergraduate studies at Trinity College Dublin, Joint Honours in Jewish and Islamic Studies (major) with Classics (minor), graduating in 2015. He completed an MA in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Hugo Valentin Centre, Uppsala University, Sweden, from 2016-2018.
Jacob's current PhD project, which he began in September 2019, is a study of the Irish essayist Hubert Butler, specifically the question of his relation to nationalism, both his own form of Irish nationalism and his response to competing forms of nationalism and the state, such as imperialism, communism and fascism. Particular attention is given to his representation of the Independent State of Croatia and the Holocaust.
Jacob's research interests more generally include the twentieth-century history of the Balkans, the Holocaust, Slavic languages (in particular Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian), Irish literature, and English-language literary responses to genocide and mass violence.
Email: ageej@tcd.ie -
Andrea Bergantino
Andrea Bergantino achieved his BA and MA in Modern Languages and Literatures (English and German) at the University of Bari "Aldo Moro", Italy. Both his undergraduate and postgraduate studies pivoted on literature and translation.
Andrea worked as Italian language assistant in two secondary schools in Dublin in the school year 2019/20 and has translated academic texts about Corpus Translation Studies and philosophy of right.
After his experience in Dublin, Andrea decided to start his PhD at Trinity College Dublin. His research focuses on the interplay between literature and translation, literary portrayals of translators and the thematization of translation.
Email: berganta@tcd.ie
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Giulia Bonaldi
Giulia Bonaldi earned the BA in Modern Literature: Italian Studies (2013) and the MA in Literature: Italian and European Studies (2016) at Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”; she was selected as Excellent Graduate, academic year 2014/2015, by Fondazione per la Promozione dello Studio e della Ricerca “La Sapienza”.
Her research interests are focused on Dante and Medieval studies, with a particular attention to the representation of emotions in Dante’s works, on which her contributions concentrate ("Maraviglia e timore: un percorso attraverso i monstra dell’Inferno dantesco", in "Letteratura e dintorni", Bulzoni Editore, «Studi (e testi) italiani», 37, 2016, pp. 125-145; «Io pur sorrisi come l’uom ch’ammicca»: il sorriso della conoscenza in Dante e Virgilio dramatis personae, «Lettere Italiane», LXXI, n.1, 2019, pp. 3-20).
As a 4th year PhD student at Trinity College, under the guidance of Dr. Igor Candido, she is currently carrying on her research project about the representation and the function of smile and tears in Dante’s works and undertaking teaching classes of Italian language and literature.
Email: bonaldig@tcd.ie -
Conor Brennan
Conor Brennan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Germanic Studies. His project compares aesthetic responses to the Anthropocene in the novels of Christoph Ransmayr, Olga Tokarczuk and Richard Flanagan. As a reference point in 20th-century modernity, the project also draws on the works of Franz Kafka, to whom all three writers frequently allude.
More broadly, Conor’s research interests include contemporary Austrian writing, theories of comparative literature and intersections of philosophy and fiction. He teaches on the year-long module ‘Introduction to German Literature & Film’.
Conor holds a BA in German & English Literature from TCD and an MSt in German from the University of Oxford, where he was an Ertegun Scholar. His doctoral project is funded by the Irish Research Council.
Email: brennc18@tcd.ie -
Rebecca Carr
Rebecca Carr is a PhD candidate in European Studies. Her thesis, supervised by Dr Clemens Ruthner, is entitled "No Man's Land: Mythology of War, Masculinity and Homeland in Greek and Serbian Aftermath Cinema". She holds two BAs (Hons), one in Psychology (George Washington University) and one in Film, Literature and Drama (Dublin Business School), as well as an MPhil in Textual and Visual Studies (Trinity College Dublin).
For her second undergraduate dissertation, "Defamiliarisation in the Arts of War", she evaluated the utilisation of the Formalist ostranenie technique in anti-war texts from various artistic mediums.
In addition to writing her thesis and lecturing at Trinity College about World War I's socio-cultural impact on Germany, Carr contributes to an online curriculum supplement that educates secondary school students about society through science fiction films. She also tutors secondary school students in film literacy and cultural studies. Carr is dedicated to bridging the public and academic communities through an exchange of culture and theory.
Email: carrreb@tcd.ie -
Gianluca Caccialupi
Gianluca Caccialupi is PhD student in Italian at Trinity College Dublin. His project, funded by the Irish Research Council (2019-2023), focuses on the relationship between the "Divine Comedy" and the French prose romance "La Queste del Saint Graal", and more generally on Dante’s reception of Arthurian literature.
He holds a Master’s Degree in Italian Studies from the University of Bologna (2018) and a joint Bachelor’s Degree in Modern Literature (Italian-French) from the University of Bologna and the University of Upper Alsace (2015).
Gianluca previously worked on the theme of the crusades in the "Divine Comedy" and on Wace’s "Roman de Brut". His main areas of interest include: Medieval Italian Literature, Medieval French Literature, Romance Philology, Medieval History.
Email: gcaccial@tcd.ie -
Benjamin Errington
Benjamin has an interest in German Early Romanticism, Late Enlightenment philosophy and Musical Aesthetics. He is also an accomplished musician and plays as a freelancer with the National Symphony Orchestra and other ensembles.
With a strong background in continental philosophy, Benjamin is currently researching notions of timbre in the late Eighteenth Century, a project that spans Germanic studies, Music History and the History of Philosophy. Principal supervisor: Jürgen Barkhoff.
Email: erringtb@tcd.ie -
Thomas Hedley
Thomas is a PhD student in the Department of Germanic Studies under the supervision of Dr Caitríona Leahy. Thomas graduated from Trinity College Dublin, where he studied German and mathematics, and completed his MA at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena with the support of a DAAD Scholarship in 2019.
His current research compares the representation of space in aesthetic modernism and a field often considered separate to cultural production, namely mathematics, which experienced its own “modernism” around 1900. This project is supported by the Irish Research Council. I am also a teaching assistant for first-year German literature.
Email: hedleyt@tcd.ie -
Louise Kari Méreau
Louise Kari Méreau is a final year PhD student in the French department of the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies at Trinity College, Dublin. She is supervised by Dr. Sarah Alyn Stacey and sponsored by the Claude and Vincenette Pichois award.
Louise has a double license of philosophy and literature (Panthéon Sorbonne, 2014), a master of French Renaissance Literature (Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2016), and a master of English Literature (National University of Ireland Galway, 2016). Her current research focuses on Cynicism in French contemporary novels, with the examples of Frederic Beigbeder and Virginie Despentes.
Email: karimerl@tcd.ie -
Danielle Leblanc
Born in New Brunswick, on Canada's East coast, Danielle LeBlanc completed an MPhil in Literary Translation at Trinity College Dublin in 2018 and is currently enrolled as a PhD candidate researching French-Canadian translations with a focus on Acadian translators.
Prior to her MPhil, she spent several years as the Executive Director of the Frye Festival, an annual bilingual literary festival in Atlantic Canada. She now oversees the Festival's English programming, sits on the Board of Directors of Éditions Perce-Neige and edits their Littoral collection, and is Translations Editor of The Antigonish Review.
Email: leblancd@tcd.ie -
Ariana Malthaner
Ariana is originally from Canada, where she received her undergraduate degree with a specialist in Celtic Studies from the University of Toronto. Following her passion for the medieval version of the Irish language, she came to Trinity where she completed the M.Phil in Early Irish and where she is currently undertaking her PhD.
The focus of her research is synchronic language variation in Old Irish, focusing specifically on the Old Irish glosses of Milan, St. Gall and Würzburg. Her research interests extend far beyond philology and into mythology, paleography, codicology, medieval medical practices, and depictions of dragons, to name a few.
She previously taught for Uppsala Universitat and is currently teaching for the Irish department here at Trinity.
Email: malthana@tcd.ie -
Martina Mendola
Martina Mendola is a 4th year PhD candidate in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies, working on identity formation in coming of age stories in contemporary Italian literature. She graduated from the University of Palermo (Italy) holds a Masters’ degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Turin (Italy) and a Postgrad Certificate in Innovation at Trinity’s Tangent.
Martina has worked as research assistant for the IRC funded project “Examining European Cultural Identity through Interdisciplinary Methods” in 2019 and she is currently a researcher in the Human’s Insights Lab, a multidisciplinary research team in Accenture’s Global Innovation Centre ‘The Dock.’
Email: mendolam@tcd.ie -
Brianán Ní Bhuachalla
Is mac léinn PhD í Brianán i Roinn na Gaeilge agus na dTeangacha Ceilteacha. Bhain sí céim amach sa Luath- agus Nua-Ghaeilge i gColáiste na Tríonóide sa bhliain 2020. Baineann a cuid taighde le ‘Eachtra an Cheithearnaigh Chaoilriabhaigh’, téacs próis ó thréimhse na Nua-Ghaeilge Moiche. Tá sí ag obair ar eagrán criticiúil den téacs agus ar aistriúchán Béarla, chomh maith le cur síos ar theanga agus ar chomhthéacs an scéil agus plé ar thraidisiún lámhscríbhinní an téacs.
Brianán is a PhD student in the Department of Irish and Celtic Languages. She completed her undergraduate degree in Early and Modern Irish at Trinity College Dublin in 2020. Her research focuses on ‘Eachtra an Cheithearnaigh Chaoilriabhaigh’, a prose text from the Early Modern Irish period. She is working on a new critical edition and English translation of the text, a linguistic and literary analysis of the tale and a commentary on the text’s manuscript transmission.
Email: bnibhuac@tcd.ie -
Peter Weakliam
Peter Weakliam is a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Irish and Celtic Studies, where he also works as a teaching assistant. His thesis will examine the work of contemporary novelist and short story writer Pádraig Ó Cíobháin, focusing particularly on the theme of freedom. He has received funding for this research from both Trinity College Dublin and the Irish Research Council.
Prior to commencing his PhD, Peter received a BA in Irish and Spanish from Trinity, and he was elected a Scholar of the University in 2015.
Email: weakliap@tcd.ie -
Alexandra Corey
Alexandra is a third-year PhD Student and TA in the Department of French, supervised by Dr Sarah Alyn Stacey and sponsored by the 1252 Studentship Award. She has a BA in English Literature from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and an MPhil in Comparative Literature (Hons) from Trinity College Dublin.
Her doctoral thesis focuses on establishing a biography of Emmanuel-Philibert de Pingon (1525-1582): a poet, historiographer and diplomat at the court of Savoy, as well as a critical edition of his poetry. Her current research concerns politics at the courts of early modern France and Savoy, reception theory, intertextuality and influence.
Email: coreya@tcd.ie