Current Research Students
David Gaughran
I am a PhD candidate based in the Department of French in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies. I hold an M.Phil in European Studies (2015) from Trinity College. My PhD examines the various ways that the Enlightenment philosophes represented Muslim society, history and religion. I aim to demonstrate that the philosophes representations of Islam were often sophisticated and sympathetic. I also aim to contextualise these representations to tell us more about the political and philosophical worldviews of the people who created them. My thesis traces the change in worldviews through looking at learned accounts of Islamic culture from 1650 to 1800, in order to demonstrate a change from one of hostility towards Islam as a religion to one of curiosity and free enquiry. The scope of my enquiry includes the English, Dutch, German and Irish Enlightenments, with a particular focus in the French Enlightenment.
Joanna Poetz
I am a PhD Candidate based in the Trinity Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the French Department. I hold an M. Phil in Medieval Language, Literature and Language (Distinction) from Trinity College Dublin and a BA from the Université de Lausanne.
My dissertation, carried out under the supervision of Dr Sarah Alyn Stacey, examines manuscripts written by the Waldensians, a group of religious dissidents. The thesis consists of a critical edition of the Waldensian "treatises" and "tracts" uniquely preserved in the Old Library of Trinity College. The corpus includes the Occitan translation of two texts by Luke of Prague: "Ayczo es la Causa del Departiment de la Gleysa Romana" and "Epistola al Serenissimo Rey Lancelau". My research addresses questions such as Old Occitan language, intertextuality and text circulation, subversive literature as well as the construction of a literary or textual genre. My research project is generously funded by an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship (2018-2020).
My broader research interests include the perception of speech and the body, Old Occitan and Old French Literature and manuscript studies. I teach in the areas of Modern French literature and language as well as Old French.
Claire Carroll
Claire Carroll is a Trinity scholar and graduated with first class honours from the Two Subject Moderatorship in English Literature and Jewish Studies in 2007. Her minor thesis in the School of English explored the phenomena of Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism in Victorian Literature. Her major thesis in the School of Religions and Theology focussed on the rhetorical engineering of the Yohannan ben Zakkai traditions in the Mishnah, Pirke Avot, Avot d’Rabbi Natan and the Babylonian Talmud. She has also studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York and was awarded a master’s degree in Modern History from University College Dublin.
Claire is currently researching the question of distinct event centred narrative portions in the book of Jeremiah with a view to discerning possible ideological standpoints and their putative relationship with contexts of composition, transmission and preservation. This project includes significant amounts of detailed translation. Her research interests also include the intersection between Biblical Studies and Literary analysis, and histories of the Near and Middle East.
Publications:
Empire, Trade and Corporate Culture: The Board of Trade Titanic Inquiry. British Studies 1. 2013
Another Dodecade: A Dialectic Model of the Decentred Universe of Jeremiah Studies 1996—2008. Currents in Biblical Research 8.2. 2010
Molly Taniş
Molly Abigail Taniş is currently in her fourth and final year as a PHD student in Italian Literature at Trinity College, Dublin. Her thesis examines animal symbologies in Italo Calvino's early war novel as conduit between real and dream/imaginary/mythic spaces. She received her Bachelor’s of Arts with Honors in Middle Eastern Studies and Romance Languages (Spanish and Italian) in 2012 after studying at New York University's campuses in Florence, Italy; Tel Aviv, Israel; and New York City, USA. The following year she completed her Masters of Arts in Italian Literature at New York University's campus in Florence, Italy. Her current research interests include: dreams, human and non-human animals, narratology, space, and identity - with both a comparativist and interdisciplinary perspective. On and off campus, she enjoys pursuing her love of foreign languages and literatures by tutoring students of all ages and translating to assist non-profit organizations as well as her fellow scholars.
Chloe Fagan
I am a PhD candidate based in the Department of Germanic Studies at TCD. My doctoral work examines the image of Albania and Kosovo in contemporary German language literature, and assesses how Albania and Kosovo are represented by authors of different nationalities writing in German, and how the issues of migration, Albania's Communist regime and its legacy, and the state of Kosovo are treated in these texts.
I received a Bachelor's Degree in German and English from TCD and I am currently working for Goethe-Institut Irland. My broader research interests include German migration literature, cultural trauma, and contemporary Albanian and Kosovar culture and history.
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.