Biography
Rosie Lavan read English at St Anne's College, Oxford, and trained as a journalist at City University, London. She then worked on the business desk at The Times, as a media assistant to a London MEP, and for House of Lords Hansard. She returned to Oxford and completed her doctorate, on Seamus Heaney, in 2014. She held stipendiary lectureships in Oxford before joining the School of English at Trinity in 2015. Her major research interests are in twentieth-century Irish and British literature and culture.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
The Poems of Seamus Heaney, Rosie Lavan and Bernard O'Donoghue, with Matthew Hollis, First, London:, Faber and Faber, 2025, -
'Divergence and Entanglement': Eavan Boland and Tradition in, editor(s)Gregory Castle , Irish Revivals, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 2025, [Rosie Lavan]
Eavan Boland and Ovid: On Exile and Exclusion in, editor(s)Isabelle Torrance , Irish Migrations and Classical Antiquity, London, Bloomsbury, 2025, [Rosie Lavan]
Heaney and Education in, editor(s)Geraldine Higgins , Seamus Heaney in Context, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp241 - 251, [Rosie Lavan]
Rosie Lavan, "Number, weight & measure": 'Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen' and the Labor of Imagination, International Yeats Studies, 4, (1), 2020, p81 - 90
Rosie Lavan, Seamus Heaney and Society, 1st, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020
Violence, Politics, and the Poetry of the Troubles in, editor(s)Eve Patten , Irish Literature in Transition 1940-1980, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020, [Rosie Lavan]
'Mycenae Lookout' and the Example of Aeschylus in, editor(s)Stephen Harrison, Fiona Macintosh, Claire Kenward and Helen Eastman , Seamus Heaney's Classics: Bann Valley Muses, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp50 - 68, [Rosie Lavan]
Rosie Lavan, Review of The Grail Mass and Other Works, by David Jones; and Thomas Goldpaugh and Jamie Callison (eds.); , Review of English Studies, 2019
The World of Sense in In Parenthesis in, editor(s)Jamie Callison, Paul Fiddes, Anna Johnson and Erik Tonning , David Jones: A Christian Modernist?, Leiden, Brill, 2018, pp92 - 106, [Rosie Lavan]
Rosie Lavan, Remembered Voices, Review of Now We Can Talk Openly About Men; Available Light, by Martina Evans; Maria McManus , Poetry Ireland Review, (126), 2018, p15-19
Rosie Lavan, The Poet's Chair, Review of One Wide Expanse; Ireland and its Elsewheres; Imaginary Bonnets with Real Bees in Them, by Michael Longley; Harry Clifton; Paula Meehan , Irish University Review, 47, (Supplement), 2017, p587-590
Image, Text and Conflict: Approaching the Border in Willie Doherty's Work in, editor(s)Nicola Gardini, Adriana Jacobs, Ben Morgan, Mohamed-Salah Omri and Matthew Reynolds , Minding Borders: Resilient Divisions in Literature, the Body and the Academy, Leeds, Legenda, 2017, pp97 - 114, [Rosie Lavan]
Rosie Lavan, S. J. Perry, Chameleon Poet: R. S. Thomas & the Literary Tradition; Rory Waterman, Belonging and Estrangement in the Poetry of Philip Larkin, R. S. Thomas and Charles Causley, Review of Chameleon Poet: R. S. Thomas & the Literary Tradition; Belonging and Estrangement in the Poetry of Philip Larkin, R. S. Thomas and Charles Causley, by S. J. Perry; Rory Waterman , Notes & Queries, 64, (1), 2017, p195-197
Rosie Lavan, Seamus Heaney and the Audience, Essays in Criticism, 66, (1), 2016, p54 - 71
Rosie Lavan, Review of Poetry, by David Constantine , Notes and Queries, 62, (4), 2015, p641-643
Rosie Lavan, Explorations: Seamus Heaney and Education, The Irish Review, (49-50), 2015, p54 - 70
Rosie Lavan, Review of The Poor Bugger's Tool: Irish Modernism, Queer Labor, and Postcolonial History, by Patrick R. Mullen , Notes & Queries, 62, (1), 2015, p175-77
Rosie Lavan, Screening Belfast: "Heaney in Limboland" and the Language of Belonging, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, 21, (2), 2015, p301 - 316
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
Rosie Lavan, Tuning the Medium: Seamus Heaney and the First-Person Plural, Seamus Heaney Memorial Lecture, Keough-Naughton Institute of Irish Studies, Notre Dame University [online event], 13 May , 2021, Keough-Naughton Institute of Irish Studies, Notre Dame University
Geraldine Higgins, Rosie Lavan, Bernard O'Donoghue, Oxford Irish Seminar: launch of Roy Foster, On Seamus Heaney. With fellow Heaney scholars Professor Geraldine Higgins (Emory) and Bernard O'Donoghue (Oxford), I was invited to contribute a talk and discussion to this special meeting of the Oxford Irish Seminar marking the publication of Roy Foster's book On Seamus Heaney (Princeton, 2020)., Oxford Irish Seminar, Hertford College, Oxford [online event], 11 November 2020, 2020, Professor Ian McBride, Professor David Dwan, Hertford College, Oxford
Roy Foster, Rosie Lavan, Glenn Patterson, Crediting Poetry: A Nobel Celebration - online panel discussion to mark the 25th anniversary of Seamus Heaney's receipt of the Nobel Prize, Crediting Poetry: A Nobel Celebration, Seamus Heaney HomePlace, Bellaghy, Co. Derry [online event], December 2020, 2020, Seamus Heaney HomePlace
Rosie Lavan, Sweeney on Station Island, Lunchtime Talks Series, Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again - Bank of Ireland Exhibition Centre, College Green, Dublin, 27 April, 2019
Rosie Lavan, "Watching Ourselves at a Distance": Seamus Heaney, 'The Mud Vision', and Modern Ireland, Irish Studies Seminar, Institute of English Studies, 18 October, 2018
Rosie Lavan, Revival Legacies: Yeats and the Dolmen Press, Yeats International Summer School, Sligo, Ireland, 26 July, 2017
Rosie Lavan, Death of a Naturalist: An Illuminations Introduction, Seamus Heaney HomePlace, Bellaghy, Co. Derry, 22 October, 2016
Rosie Lavan, Heaney and the Audience, Cambridge Group for Irish Studies, Magdalene College, Cambridge, 10 November, 2015, Cambridge Group for Irish Studies
Research Expertise
Description
My research expertise lies in twentieth-century Irish and British literature and culture. Within these broad fields I have particular interests in poetry, textual criticism, classical reception, life-writing, and cultural studies. I am an expert on the work of Seamus Heaney and I have co-edited, with Bernard O'Donoghue and Matthew Hollis, the definitive edition of his poetry, to be published by Faber & Faber in autumn 2025. My first monograph, Seamus Heaney and Society, was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. My current monograph project, 'Watching Ourselves at a Distance', examines how writers and artists including Eavan Boland, Padraic Fallon, Seamus Heaney, Edna O'Brien, Nell McCafferty, and the filmmaker Pat Collins, have represented collective experience in Ireland since the 1950s. Much of my research situates literature in its social and political contexts, or considers ethical questions surrounding or provoked by literary practice and reception. I have examined these issues with colleagues in the Centre for Resistance Studies at TCD, notably through devising a series of events on Literature and Resistance from 2022-24 which initiated an annual partnership with the International Literature Festival Dublin.Recognition
Awards and Honours
Visiting Fellow, Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC
Visiting Fellow, Rose Library, Emory University, Atlanta
Award beneficiary, Visual and Performing Arts Fund, Trinity College Dublin
Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Award
Visiting Fellow, Moore Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway
Memberships
International Association for Literary Journalism Studies
Elizabeth Bowen Society
International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures
David Jones Society