Biography
I am Assistant Professor of Black Studies and am located in the Department of Sociology. I teach on the Trinity elective which introduces students to the epistemology of Black Studies as an intellectual pursuit. This is an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary field of knowledge that interrogates historical events that have impacted on those who are racialised as Black, while centring the perspectives of Black people in constructing and deconstructing these events. I lead a research project to recover the lived experiences and sociological impact of African students that came to Trinity in the early 20th century which amplifies our understanding of Blackness in pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Through extensive conference work, a process which is highly generative in terms of theory, I have grown research networks across Irish, Northern Irish, Scottish and US universities, where collaboration is developing to look at the local hidden histories of the black population in Ireland, an emerging and exciting site of investigation. I have to date introduced funding to the value of €153,500 to my research, which comprises clear strands of enquiry in the field of Black Studies, archival recovery, critical race, gender, and ethnicity studies, and aligns with the Department of Sociology's research streams. My research on Africans and Black mixed-race in Ireland moves the concept of being Black in Ireland beyond a current research focus that is mostly limited to a migratory lens, to embrace a more in-depth analysis of sociohistorical strands and intercommunal framing of what it means to be Black in 21st century Ireland. I am a member of the Centre for Forced Migration Studies Network (TCD), and my work corresponds with the transitional justice strand of the work of the Centre for Post-Conflict Justice. My research is strongly motivated by the decoloniality of epistemology and educational practice, and accompanying social activism which underpins Black Studies as a discipline. My work in this regard has included inter alia the introduction of decolonial practice into the courses on which I lecture; international conference presentations; national newspaper opinion pieces in Irish and US media; my role(s) on the advisory board member of Trinity-Inc and Trinity Colonial Legacies Project; and Co-Chair of the Race, Ethnicity, and Equality Working Group (REEWG). I am a co-author of REEWG"s EDI Report 2021/22 and I lead the development of the Action Plan for College. I am a Ministerial appointee to the National Advisory Committee on the Restitution and Repatriation of Cultural Heritage board. I have developed my doctoral research into a creative format, using podcasts which will be supported with a forthcoming documentary short, and a written conversation series in collaboration with Skein Press, and Afua Hirsch former journalist at the Guardian and now teaching at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Philomena Mullen, The Insistence of Blackness and the Persistence of Antiblackness in Ireland, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 0, (Special issue), 2025, p1-9
Philomena Mullen, Black Unsettlement. Embodied Blackness and Black Studies in the Irish Context, Irish Journal of Sociology, Special Issue, 2024
Philomena Mullen, Defying the exclusionary homogeneity of Irish whiteness: mixed-race children in Irish industrial schools in the twentieth century, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 46, (7), 2022, p1456-1477
Stephen Hewer, Philomena Mullen, Jairo I. Fúnez-Flores, Decolonising medieval Irish History? The (im)possibility of challenging existing practice, Postcolonial Studies, 2026, p1-20
Philomena Mullen, Performing Inclusion and Decorative Diversity: On the Limits of EDI in White Academic Spaces, The Sociological Observer: Rethinking inclusion: EDI in a time of uncertainty, (6), 2026, p28-36
Philomena Mullen, Racialising Irishness: The 2004 citizenship referendum and its enduring legacy, Special Issue: Racialised from the beginning, 0, 2026
Philomena Mullen, The new racial regime. Recalibrations of white supremacy, Review of The new racial regime. Recalibrations of white supremacy, by Alana Lentin , Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2025, p1-3
Philomena Mullen, Race in Irish Literature and Culture, Review of Race in Irish Literature and Culture, by Edited by Malcolm Sen and Julie McCormack Weng , Ethnic and Racial Studies, 48, (13), 2024, p2739"2742
Philomena Mullen, Black baby box[ed], Irish University Review, 50, (2), 2020, p252 - 255
Philomena Mullen, On Being Black, Irish and a Woman, Women's Studies Review, 6, 1999
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
Phil Mullen, 'In the Half Light: Voices from Black Ireland', Skein Press, https://skeinpress.com/conversations/, 2025, -
Black Irish women are denied equity within the workplace in, editor(s)Ebun Joseph , Equity in the Workplace. Stories from Black Irish women in Ireland, Dublin, 2024, [Philomena Mullen]
Research Expertise
Description
My research is located within the interdisciplinary study of race, blackness and identity in Ireland, with a focus on contemporary and historical processes of racialisation. I examine the sociological and historical positioning of people of African descent in Ireland, spanning the pre-1990s period all the way to the transformations of the Celtic Tiger era, and interrogate how these trajectories shape present-day understandings of belonging, identity and social inclusion. A central strand of my work explores the intersection of race with institutional histories of care in Ireland, including industrial schools, mother and baby homes, reformatories and Magdalene laundries. Drawing on archival research and critical theory, I analyse how racialisation intersects with race, class, gender and institutionalisation within these systems, contributing to current debates on memory and trauma in relation to historical injustice. My research in this area is also informed by a reflexive and ethically grounded engagement with lived experience. I engage in the recovery of historical records relating to Black presence in Ireland, prior to and following the foundation of the state. Using an interdisciplinary approach, I interrogate how Blackness has been constructed, represented and then marginalised within Irish historical and cultural narratives. My work also examines contemporary formations of Black identity in Ireland, including the dynamics of racialisation, belonging and social perception among African and mixed-race communities. This includes an exploration of how phenotype operates as a site of shared and differentiated experience, shaping social interaction, identity formation and partner choice for those of African/Irish ancestries. Methodologically, I employ sociological, as well as historical and interdisciplinary approaches, including the use of autoethnography to reflect on the position of the Black academic within predominantly white institutional spaces. This extends to my work in teaching, where I examine the pedagogical implications of delivering Black Studies curricula within the Irish university context.Projects
- Title
- Archiving Harmony: A Documentation and Digitization Strategy for an Irish Anti-Racism Group in the 1980s and 1990s
- Summary
- The aim of this research project is to digitise the Harmony archives, so as to memorialise the activities of the group and to contribute to the historical record of anti-racism work in an Irish setting, pre the Celtic-Tiger era and large scale inward migration to Ireland.
- Funding Agency
- Royal Irish Academy
- Date From
- 01/06/2024
- Date To
- 09/05/2025
- Title
- Start-up Fund
- Summary
- developing your research and you can charge eligible expenses to it (e.g. additional conference travel, research materials, research assistance etc).
- Funding Agency
- Department of Sociology
- Date From
- 02 February 2024
- Date To
- 20 December 2025
- Title
- Thinking aloud thinking together - In the Half Light: Voices from Black Ireland
- Summary
- `Thinking Aloud, Thinking Together" is a series of live and recorded conversations amplifying voices that have been silenced in Irish cultural life. It gives space to artists, writers and thinkers who offer radical new perspectives on existing narratives.In the Half Light: Voices from Black Ireland. Our first conversation takes the form of a podcast series, using the audio format, I have created an anonymised, open space for `mixed-race" people who grew up in Irish care institutions to explore the impact of their erasure from institutional abuse history and discourse in Ireland. Through this conversation, they aim to undo that erasure, one voice"at"a"time.this expands my doctoral research on mixed race individuals who grew up in institutional care in Ireland.
- Funding Agency
- Rowan Trust
- Date From
- July 2025
- Date To
- May 2026
Recognition
Representations
Ministerial appointee - member of National Advisory Committee on the Restitution and Repatriation of Cultural Heritage board.
Trustee and Company Secretary of Association of Mixed-Race Irish (AMRI) advocacy group
Board member of LUAIL - the All Ireland Dance Assemble funded by The Arts Council
First reviewer on articles submitted to, European Societies, History of Education, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Irish Journal of Sociology, Quality Education for All, African Journal of Strategy, Defence and Security Studies (AJSDSS) Whiteness and Education.
Board member Skein Press - non profit publishing house for underrepresented voices.
Member of AFSAI (African Association of Scholars in Ireland)
Board Member of UNIDPAD 2014 -2028 (International Decade for People of African Descent), and Chair of UNIDPAD's Education subcommittee. Chair of the Education sub group 2022-2024.
Awards and Honours
IRC Government of Ireland Postgraduate scholar
Memberships
Member of the British Sociological Association
Member of the Sociology Association of Ireland