Postgraduate Student Handbook
The postgraduate student handbook is available here.
Trinity College Postgraduate Research Student Handbook
Postgraduate Representatives
A number of registered postgraduate research students serve as representatives for the broader graduate community in the School of English every year (excluding MPhil students, who have their own class representatives for each taught programme). The Graduate Students’ Union oversees the election of these representatives, which usually takes place in September. Teaching Assistants in the School also have a representative.
The current TA representative in the School is Esther Reilly. Esther attends School committee meetings, liaises with individual TAs and postgraduates, and hosts occasional TA and PGR meetings. Amudha Mathur Vinayagamoorthy is the School Convenor and sits on our School's Executive Committee. Esther and Amudha can be contacted directly at: reillyes@tcd.ie and mathurva@tcd.ie respectively.
Current Research Students
Alan Armstrong
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
Amy Barkhaus
Name: Amy Barkhaus
Email: barkhaua@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr. Jane Carroll
Thesis Title: Fantastic Horizons: The Life and Work of Bernard Sleigh (1872-1954)
Projected Completion: 2025
Background: MLitt Fantasy Literature (University of Glasgow) BA English Literature with Honours (Arizona State University); BA
Psychology + Creative Writing minor (University of Arizona)
Research Key Words: Fantasy Literature; the Golden Age; Fin de Siècle; Fairy Tales; Supernatural Folklore; The Arts & Crafts
Movement; Pre-Raphaelites; Literary Geography & Topography
Ginevra Bianchini
Name: Ginevra Bianchini
Email: bianchig@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Melanie Otto
Thesis Title: Naked flesh: on the intersectionality of rape culture between race and gender in the United Kingdom and North America.
Projected Completion: 2025
Funding: N/A
Academic Background: Bachelor's degree in Foreign Languages and Literatures (2014-2017 at the University of Bologna); Master's degree in Modern, Postcolonial and Comparative Literatures (2017-2020 at the University of Bologna)
Research keywords: Gender Studies, Critical Race Theory, Visual Studies, Film Studies, Indigenous North American Literature, British African Cultural Productions, Rape Culture, Women's Writing.
Rían Boyle
Name: Rían Boyle
Email: boyleri@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Mark Faulkner
Thesis Title: A Data-Driven Approach to Studying the Literary Regulation of Old English Social Norms
Projected Completion: August 2026
Funding: Self-Funded
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; Early Medieval Literature, Old English Society; Corpus Linguistics; Social Norms; Distant Reading
Charlotte Buckley
Name: Charlotte Buckley
Email: bucklech@tcd.ie
Supervisors: Deirdre Madden and Dr Rosie Lavan
Thesis Title: Modern Cartographers: Ecofeminist Readings of Contemporary Irish Women's Poetry
Projected Completion: August 2025
Funding: N/A
Background: B.A. (Hons) in English Literature from the University of Manchester. MPhil in Creative Writing, Trinity College Dublin (2012-13).
Research keywords: Irish poetry, ecofeminism, ecopoetry, women's poetry, gender, cartography, landscape
Leah Byrne
Name: Leah Byrne
Email: byrnel28@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Clare Clarke
Thesis Title: Working title: ‘Bad things happen:’ The Toxic Family in Gillian Flynn’s Domestic Noir Fiction
Projected Completion: March 2027
Academic Background: BA (Hons) in English Studies, Trinity College Dublin. MPhil in Popular Literature, Trinity College Dublin
Research keywords: Gillian Flynn, domestic noir, family, crime fiction, feminism, popular literature
Siobhán Callaghan
Name: Siobhán Callaghan
Email: callagsi@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Pádraic Whyte
Dissertation Title: The displaced children of the Second World War in historical fiction for children
Projected Completion: 2022
Funding: Irish Research Council
Background: BA in English and Drama, M.Phil. in Children’s Literature
Research keywords:children's literature, historical fiction, displacement, war
S.J. De Mattio
Name: S.J. DeMattio
Email: demattis@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Prof Chris Morash
Thesis Title: Exhuming the Later Works of Ireland’s “Forgotten Genius,” Teresa Deevy
Projected Completion: September 2023
Funding: Fulbright Ireland-USA, Open Study/Research Award, The Teresa Deevy Project/Mint Theater Company
Academic Background: Bachelor of Liberal Arts (concentrations in Literature & Theology), Sarah Lawrence College.
Research keywords: Women & Gender Studies, Ritual, Violence, Theology, Catholicism, Performance Theory, Free State History, Theatre History, Irish Women Writers
Orlaith Darling
Name: Orlaith Darling
Email: darlingo@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Paul Delaney
Thesis Title: 'Welcome to the good life!': Representations of neoliberalism in contemporary Irish women's short fiction
Projected Completion: September 2023
Funding: Irish Research Council
Academic Background: BA (Hons) TSM English Literature & History, Trinity College Dublin (2018); MSc Literature and Modernity: 1900 - Present, University of Edinburgh (2019)
Research keywords: Short fiction; neoliberalism; women's writing; Irish writing
Janice Deitner
Name: Janice Lynne Deitner
Email: deitnerj@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Bernice M. Murphy
Thesis Title: "You Know": Bodies of Knowledge in Shirley Jackson's America
Projected Completion: September 2023
Funding: TCD Provost’s PhD Project Award
Academic Background: BA in English Studies (disc. scol.), Trinity College Dublin
Research keywords: Shirley Jackson, American Literature, the Gothic, Horror, Science Fiction, Popular Literature, Body/Mind, Genre Periodicals, Early and Mid-Twentieth Century
Orla Donnelly
Name: Orla Donnelly
Email: ordonnel@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Clare Clarke
Thesis Title: Dark Tourism and the Late-Victorian British Fictions of Gothic Egypt
Projected Completion: August 2024
Funding: Provost Research Project Award
Academic Background: B.A., Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (I.A.D.T.), M.Phil, Trinity College Dublin (2014-15)
Research keywords: British; Nineteenth Century Literature; Dark Tourism; Gothic Egypt
Anna Donovan
Name: Anna Donovan
Email: donovaa1@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Prof Aileen Douglas
Dissertation Title: Frances Burney: Sympathy, Sincerity, and National Identity, 1778-1814
Projected Completion: September 2020
Background: BA in New Media and English, University of Limerick (2015); MA in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, University of Limerick (2017)
Research keywords:Eighteenth-century literature; National Identity; Frances Burney; British theatre of the eighteenth-century
Rebecca Easler
Name: Rebecca Easler
Email: easlerr@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr. Jarlath Killeen
Thesis Title: Representations of the Dead Child in the Novels of Charles Dickens
Projected Completion: September 2023
Academic Background: B.A. (Hons) in English Literature and History from Concordia College Moorhead (2014); MSc in Literature and Society: Enlightenment, Romantic, and Victorian Literature from the University of Edinburgh (2017)
Research keywords: Charles Dickens, Child Death, Childhood, Victorian Death Culture, Social Criticism,
Tony Flynn
Name: Tony Flynn
Email: flynnto@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Jane Suzanne Carroll
Dissertation Title:: Inscriptions in Children's Books: The collection and preservation of childhood through inscriptions and marginalia in the Pollard Collection of Children's Books, 1900-1925
Projected completion: March 2025
Funding: TCD Provost's PhD Project Award
Background:: BA (Hons) in Film + Television Production, Institute of Art, Design and Technology Dun Laoghaire (2011); M.Phil. in Children's Literature, Trinity College Dublin (2018)
Research Keywords: marginalia; inscriptions; childhood studies; the Pollard Collection; book as object
Sohail Hoda
Name: Sohail Hoda
Email: hodas@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr.Ema Vyroubalova
Thesis Title: The Subaltern Voice in Utpal Dutt's Revolutionary Theatre
Projected Completion: 30 Sep 2026
Background: Master of Arts in English from Jadavpur University
Research Keywords: Heteroglossic Shakespeare, Syncretic Theatre, Gorky, Simonov, Brecht, Quaranic doctrine of socialism, Subaltern Historiography
Casey Lawrence
Name: Casey Lawrence
Email: clawrenc@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Sam Slote
Dissertation Title: ‘The New Womanly Man’: Crossdressing and gender inversion in Joyce and his contemporaries
Projected Completion: September 2022
Funding: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)
Background: MA, Brock University (Canada)
Research keywords: James Joyce; Modernism; crossdressing; gender; queer
Ziyun Liu
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
Ariana Lyriotakis
Name: Ariana Lyriotakis
Email: lyriotaa@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Professor Stephen Matterson
Thesis Title: "In the exile that deepens": Misanthropic Isolation in Galway Kinnell
Projected Completion: September 2024
Background: BA (Distinction) English Literature and Political Science, McGill University (2000); MA Twentieth-Century Literature, University of Leeds (2001)
Research keywords: American poetry, ontopoetics, rupture, postmodernism, environmental philosophy
Liz MacBride
Name: Liz MacBride Email: emacbrid@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Kevin Power & Philip Coleman
Thesis Title: My Psychogeographical Romance: Mapping Dublin’s nightlife within the short story cycle
Projected Completion: 2025
Background: BA English Studies, TCD (2019); MA Creative Writing, Royal Holloway, University of London (2020)
Research keywords: short fiction; creative writing; literary mapping; psychogeography; story cycles; urban writing
Amelia McConville
Name: Amelia McConville
Email: amcconv@tcd.ie
Supervisor(s): Dr Philip Coleman & Prof Mani Ramaswami (Genetics)
Dissertation Title: Poetry Studies and Neurohumanities: Interdisciplinary Approaches
Projected Completion: September 2021
Funding: 1252 Student Scholarship
Background: BA English and Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin
Research keywords: Poetry Studies, Visual Poetry, Neurohumanities
Joanne McDonagh Touhey
Name: Joanne McDonagh Touhey
Email: touheyj@tcd.ie
Supervisor(s): Eoin McNamee and Julie Bates
Thesis Title: (Working Title) 'Tangled Trees: Memoirs of Dysfunctional Families.'
Projected Completion: 2026
Funding: N/A
Academic Background: MA, National University of Galway, 2021. BA, Social Care Practice, Athlone Institute of Technology, 2018.
Research keywords: Memoir, Dysfunctional Families, Identity, Culture, Abuse culture within families, Racism, Ethnicity, Travellers, Conflict.
Margaret Masterson
Name: Margaret Masterson
Email: mmasters@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Jane Suzanne Carroll
Thesis Title: Maria Edgeworth in the Pollard Collection of children’s books: constructing, collecting and conserving girlhood in the children’s literature archive
Projected Completion: September 2023
Funding: Irish Research Council
Academic Background: BMT in Music Therapy, Loyola University New Orleans, USA (1991); MLIS in Library and Information Science, Dominican University, USA (2006); MPhil in Children's Literature, Trinity College Dublin (2019)
Research keywords: Maria Edgeworth, children's literature, young adult literature, Irish bibliography, book history, print culture, book collection, girlhood studies
Chiara Mastronardo
Name: Chiara Mastronardo
Email: mastronc@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Professor Christopher Morash Thesis
Thesis
Title: Archipelagic relations and the space of Islands’ Popular Fiction: a comparative perspective of Ireland, Iceland, Taiwan, Singapore 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: Island Studies, Spatial theory, Irish writing, Literary spaces, Comparative literatur
Hannah Elizabeth Mathew
Name: Hannah Elizabeth Mathew
Email: mathewh@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Professor Darryl Jones
Dissertation Title: “A phoenix quality of the mind”: John Wyndham and the Cold-War Dystopia
Projected Completion: August 2024
Funding: TCD Postgraduate Research Studentship (1252)
Background: M.A. in English from Ambedkar University Delhi.
Research keywords: dystopias, biopolitics, cold-war, intellectual outlier, personhood.
Elliott Mills
Name: Elliott Mills
Email: elmills@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Tom Walker and Dr Sam Slote
Dissertation Title: Flann O'Brien and the Technologies of Communication
Projected Completion: August 2022
Funding: Irish Research Council
Background: BA(Hons) and MA, University of Manchester
Research keywords: Modernism, Irish Studies, New Media, Flann O’Brien
Caitlin Moon
Name: Caitlin Moon
Email: moonc@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Brendan O’Connell
Dissertation Title: The Loathly Lady: Dynamic and Didactic Phases of Gender & Disability in Medieval Literature
Projected Completion: Spring 2021
Background: BA, University of Delaware (2015); MA in English, Villanova University (2017), MA Certificate in Women and Gender Studies, Villanova University (2017)
Research keywords: Medieval Literature, Women, Disability, Gender, Loathly Lady
Méabh Ní Choileáin
Name: Méabh Ní Choileáin
Email: Nchoilem@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr. Pádraic Whyte
Thesis Title: The Development of Irish Identity and the Immigrant Experience in Irish American Children's Literature (1850-1940)
Projected Completion: September 2025
Funding: Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship
Background: M.Phil Children's Literature (TCD); Graduate Diploma in Education (Primary Teaching) (DCU); BA hons Modern Irish and Drama Studies (UCD)
Research keywords: Children's Literature, Immigration, Irish America, Catholicism, Celtic Mythology
James Michael O'Brien
Name: James Michael O'Brien
Email: obriej47@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Philip Coleman
Dissertation Title: ‘The Going to What Lasts’: A critical and contextual reading of Raymond Carver’s poetry.
Projected Completion: 2025
Background: I am currently a teacher (secondary) in the UK. My undergraduate degree was from The University of Edinburgh.
Research keywords: Carver, Poetry, Alcohol, Cure, Transcendental
Ellen Orchard
Name: Ellen Orchard
Email: orcharde@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Rosie Lavan
Thesis Title: The Child in Irish Poetry: From Yeats to the Present
Projected Completion: 2025
Funding: Irish Research Council
Academic Background: BA English, Trinity College Dublin (2014-18); MA Poetry: Creativity and Criticism (2018-19)
Gustav Parker Hibbett
Name: Gustav Parker Hibbett
Email: hibbettg@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr. Kevin Power & Dr. Rosie Lavan
Thesis Title: Divorce Gifts: Autoethnographic Essays on Race, Language, and Systemic Power
Projected Completion: 2025
Academic Background: B.A. in English, Stanford University (2018)
Research keywords: decolonialism, autoethnography, semiotics, genre studies
Ann Pascoe-van Zyl
Name: Ann Pascoe-van Zyl
Email: pascoeve@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Alice Jorgensen
Thesis Title: Landscape, Place and Space and the Mind in the Old English Psalms
Projected Completion: September 2025
Background: BA English and Economics and BA (Hons) English, Rhodes University, South Africa; MA in English Studies with Distinction, University of Nottingham (2018)
Research keywords: Old English Psalms; Latin Psalms; Old English Poetry; Emotion and Cognition in Old English Literature; Landscape; Space; Place; Cognitive Poetics
Zoe Patterson
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
Claire Poynton-Smith
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
Amrutha Puthuruvalapil Unnikrishnan
Name: Amrutha Puthuruvalapil Unnikrishnan
Email: puam@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr. Melanie Otto
Thesis Title: Space in Displacement Narratives: A Study of Political and Psychological Spaces in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Writings
Projected Completion: September 2025
Funding: Academic Background: BA in English Language and Literature from University of Calicut, India and MA in English Literature from The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India.
Research keywords: Spatial Identity, Citizenship, Refugee/Displacement Narratives, Political spaces, Home, Unhome, Aspirational displacement, Transitional Spaces, Gendered Mobilities, Resistance, Adaptation
Esther Reilly
Name: Esther Reilly
Email: reillyes@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Jarlath Killeen
Thesis Title: Extreme Bodies in Wilkie Collins' Fiction
Projected Completion: 2023
Background: M.Phil. in Children's Literature, Trinity College Dublin (2019); B.A. in English Literature, University of Pittsburgh (2018)
Research Keywords: Freakery; Victorian Freak Shows; Nineteenth-century cultural studies; Nineteenth-century popular culture; Disability studies; Critical body studies; Sensation Fiction
Brenda Romero
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
Stefano Rosignoli
Name: Stefano Rosignoli
Email: rosignos@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Sam Slote
Dissertation Title: A Comparative Textual Analysis of the Ethics of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.
Projected Completion: 30 September 2020
Background: Modern Literature (2006) and Publishing Studies (2008), University of Bologna
Research keywords: James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, textual scholarship, moral philosophy.
Eric Swartz
Name: Eric Swartz
Email: swartze@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr. Julie Bates
Thesis Title: Infrastructure, Mobility, and Development in Contemporary Fiction
Projected Completion: 2024
Funding: Irish Research Council
Background: BA English Literature, Belmont Abbey College (2018). MPhil in Irish Writing, Trinity College Dublin (2019).
Research keywords: infrastructure, networks, mobility, W.G. Sebald, Mathias Énard, Olga Tokarczuk, Helen DeWitt
Elena Valli
Name: Elena Valli
Email: vallie@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Prof Stephen Matterson
Thesis Title: 17th-century Religious Exercises and Meditations in the Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, Anthony Hecht, and Geoffrey Hill. (working title)
Projected Completion: September 2025
Funding: Fitzroy Pyle Postgraduate Entry Bursary
Academic Background: BA Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bologna (2014-2017); MA English and American Literary Studies (Joint Degree), University of Venice Ca' Foscari (2017-2020)
Research keywords: formalist poetry; religion; modernism and postmodernism; 17th-century poetry; Elizabeth Bishop; Anthony Hecht; Geoffrey Hill
Amudha Mathur Vinayagamoorthy
Name: Amudha Mathur Vinayagamoorthy
Email: mathurva@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Pádraic Whyte
Thesis Title: Politics of Trauma in the Disintegration of Childhood and Nationhood as Represented in South Asian Children’s Literature
Projected Completion: 2024
Funding: N/A
Background: MA in English, Stella Maris College, University of Madras (2017)
Research keywords: Children's Literature; Young Adult Fiction; South Asian Literature; Trauma Studies
Bowen Wang
Name: Bowen Wang
Email: bowang@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Professor Philip Coleman
Dissertation Title: From Ut pictura poesis to Intermediality: Mina Loy, E. E. Cummings, and Djuna Barnes as Modernist Painter-Poets
Projected Completion: September 2023
Funding: TCD-CSC (China Scholarship Council) Joint Scholarship Programme
Background: BA English Language and Literature, Sun Yat-sen University (2016); MSc Literature and Modernity: 1900 to the Present, University of Edinburgh (2018)
Research Keywords: Modernism; intermediality; literature and visual art; experimental poetics; avant-garde
Annie Williams
Name: Annie Williams
Email: williaa9@tcd.ie
Supervisor: Dr Julie Bates
Thesis Title: Liquid Modernism: Bodies of Water in British and Irish Literature
Projected Completion: 2025
Funding: Trinity College Dublin Postgraduate Research Studentship
Academic Background: B.A. (First Class Honours) English Literature, University of Manchester (2018). M.A. English Literature, University of British Columbia (2020).
Research keywords: modernism; embodiment; environment