Early Career Researcher Poster Showcase

Each year, the Trinity Long Room Hub hosts up to 50 of Trinity’s PhD students and early career researchers from across the Arts and Humanities. We are committed to showing how their research provides unique perspectives on societal challenges.

Early Career Researcher Poster Showcase 2024

Ahmed Ellaboudy | Law | Rule of Law and Preventive Justice: Property Rights Protection in the Age of Countering Terrorism | Trinity Research Doctorate Award | ellaboua@tcd.ie

The persistent global threat posed by terrorism has necessitated the development of permanent legal instruments specifically designed to address this severe challenge, resulting in the emergence of different forms of state interference with private property rights primarily concerned with tackling future terrorist activities. Preventive measures applied in the context of countering terrorism leave considerable pressure on the conventional criminal system by challenging the normative controls associated with the rule of law principles and its traditional safeguards.

Accordingly, this study examines the impact of such legal techniques on the scope, level of protection, and extent of restrictions imposed on private property rights. It investigates the interconnections among concepts of constitutionalism, risk-based security regulation, and property rights; and delineates their interplay. The main inquiry of the study is; Does the preventive justice model, embedded in contemporary counter-terrorism laws, offer the necessary safeguards (conceptually and institutionally) for property rights?

Employing a doctrinal legal research methodology and a comparative scholarly approach, the study unpacks the normative and institutional structure of counter-terrorism regimes, at the international and European levels given their inevitable global influence.

Meanwhile, the UK and Egypt will be considered as case studies for both a constitutional democratic regime and an authoritarian model of constitutional governance respectively, exploring spill-over effects and/or opportunities for the abuse of preventive measures against those for whom these measures were not originally intended.

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Amy O'Keeffe | Histories and Humanities | The (In)Tangible Body: Representations of Body Modification in the Ancient Mediterranean | CRC Ciarán Barry Research Scholarship | okeeffam@tcd.ie

“[T]hey would exhibit to them fattened children of the wealthy inhabitants (…) [who were] pretty nearly equal in length and breadth, entirely decorated on their back and front, having been tattooed with flowers.” Xenophon, Anabasis, 5.4.32

My research looks at different types of body modification practices (tattooing, head-shaping, scarification) in the context of the ancient Mediterranean world. I explore the archaeological evidence from Greece, the Cycladic Islands, Cyprus, and Egypt to determine how prevalent and widespread these practices were. These cultures had significant contact with each other over the centuries, leading to artistic representations of each other and literary references to one another noting their differences (as seen in Xenophon).

I also investigate the scholarly reception to this evidence and to these practices as a whole. Body modifications have repeatedly been viewed as barbaric, and have been hidden or ignored in the record. I will address the harmful and incorrect stereotypes and biases that have been perpetuated in archaeology. Scholarship has in the past represented modified bodies as being uncivilised, unintelligent, and of low moral worth. Women receive further negativity as they are often interpreted as being prostitutes or being of “loose morals” if they had tattoos.

This poster plays with this idea of our preconceived notions of the ancient past. The Venus de Milo (Aphrodite of Melos) is an instantly recognisable piece of Hellenistic art, which is often lauded for its beauty. Many women of the ancient past, as far back as the Neolithic period, were tattooed. In contemporary ancient societies, this was seen as a mark of honour and beauty, as with the Thracians. But in modern society, the stigma around tattooed female bodies continues to linger. This is why I have chosen to include the word ‘Whore’ behind the statue, as it is a label and value often given to tattooed women, both in the scholarship of the past and in our modern society. Body modifications, particularly tattoos, are sometimes presented as being a new and subversive cultural trend. They are, in fact, ancient history.

Image source/attribution: © 2011 Musée du Louvre, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn / Thierry Ollivier

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Anna Devlin | Histories and Humanities | Imagining Ireland's Self-Governed Economic Future, 1893-1923 | Irish Research Council | devlinan@tcd.ie

As the likelihood of some form of Irish self-government grew, alongside political and cultural advances, the interlinked issue of Ireland’s economic future was developed. Economic issues have a significant influence on the perception and desirability of independence and economic narratives also play a role in conceptualising an ‘imagined community’. This research will challenge the common assertion in the literature that there was a failure to engage with economic considerations in the decades prior to independence. The aims of this research were to establish over the period 1893-1923, how a self-governed Ireland’s economic future had been imagined and evolved, to evaluate the participation of all levels of Irish society in this and to examine the impact of the ideas and process of transition to self-government on economic policy in the new state. The focus is on nationalists, those who supported Ireland’s claim to be a nation and positively imagined a self-governed economic future.

Through published writing, news reports, parliamentary papers and personal papers, the diversity of nationalist economic discourse which emerged in this period was examined across four dynamic phases; from after the defeat of the second Home Rule bill when the possibility of self-government appeared remote, to the turmoil of the Third Home Rule Act with the Great War, Ulster unionist resistance, the 1916 Rising and the Irish Convention 1917-18, to the setting up, by Sinn Féin of a parallel system of government 1919-21, to the acceptance of the Treaty, through the phase of Provisional Government and civil war, to the new state. It was further segmented according to levels of economic thought: high (opinion leaders, academics and politicians), medium (associational groups) and low (the economic individual). These seven elements form the basis of the chapters. The continuing influence of pre-independence ideas can be traced in Irish Free State economic policies.

There was significant ongoing engagement at all levels of society at this time with economic considerations and visions of a self-governed future. The research demonstrates the changing levels of consensus and difference in relation to a self-governed Irish economy and how the manner and means of transition impacted the path taken. In addition, it reveals the contribution made by associational groups and the role of economic data as well as historical narrative to the wider project. The research provides a new economic perspective on the Irish revolutionary and pre-revolutionary periods and helps bridge the divide between pre- and post-independence Ireland.

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Annie Williams | English | Liquid Modernism: Bodies of Water in British and Irish Literature| Irish Research Council | williaa9@tcd.ie

My PhD thesis is a medical-environmental humanities project on the evolving intersections of bodies and water in early twentieth-century British and Irish literature. I analyse water usage and wastage in the fiction of writers including James Joyce, Jean Rhys, Kate O’Brien, and Virginia Woolf, translating knowledge between literature and science in order to better understand how our bodies have historically been implicated in global aquatic ecosystems.

The quote on my poster originates from Woolf’s 1925 novel, Mrs Dalloway. For me, this line perfectly encapsulates my core thesis: that bodies are porous, permeable, and that it is through our bodily waters that we seep and bleed into each other and our environments.

I also chose this quote because it is central to the theoretical framework that underpins my thesis: Astrida Neimanis’ “hydrofeminism”. For Neimanis, “we are all bodies of water”. Understanding embodiment as “watery”, they write, enables us to experience ourselves less as “isolated entities”, and more as mutually entangled in a “complex fluid circulation”. Our bodies, after all, are mostly water, and it is through water that we come into contact with so many other living things. This critical lens sheds light on how we’ve historically understood concepts like purity and contamination, whether from body to body, or river to sea: kisses, blood transfusions, urban plumbing, and marine pollution are all implicated in these complex watery economies. The modernist period, with its radical shifts in infrastructure and healthcare, is a rich site for such analysis.

Water thus demands a transcorporeal feminist ethics. I hope that the painting I’ve chosen to feature in my poster - Laura Knight’s “The Dark Pool”, as featured in a 2018 Pallant House Gallery exhibition inspired by Woolf’s writing - lends itself to this methodology: a lone woman gazing out to sea as if contemplating their relationality.

Image source/attribution:

Dame Laura Knight, The Dark Pool (1908 – 1918), Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle.

https://www.creativeboom.com/news/virginia-woolf-an-exhibition-inspired-by-her-writings/

Neimanis, Astrida. (2012). “Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water.” In Undutiful Daughters: Mobilizing Future Concepts, Bodies and Subjectivities in Feminist Thought and Practice. (pp. 85–99). Ed. Henriette Gunkel, Chrysanthi Nigianni and Fanny Söderbäck. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Woolf, Virginia, & Bradshaw, David. (2000). Mrs. Dalloway. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Cáit Murphy | Creative Arts | A Caméra-stylo for the Social Media Era: (Re)imagining Mobilography in Contemporary Digital Screen Culture | Provost's PhD Project Award | cmurph59@tcd.ie

Alexandre Astruc’s concept of the caméra-stylo or camera-pen (1948) proposes that a true filmmaker-as-author could write a film with the camera just as a writer uses a pen in their hand. This would bring about a new avant-garde for cinema. While Astruc’s concept is known for its contribution to the theory of the auteur film director, he also envisioned that with the wider availability of consumer-grade cameras and screening apparatuses, ‘the day is not far off when everyone will possess a projector’.

The free-wheeling, mobile camera could capture intimately the thoughts and agitations of the person wielding it, who would not be bound to the studio but would take to the streets and homes of ordinary people. Astruc's ambitious vision seemed destined for the digital era, where cameras and screens are pervasive and even sit in our pockets wherever we go.

My PhD research asks, what does the caméra-stylo mean in today’s social media era in a landscape where the public has access to smartphones and online distribution platforms? Taking a case study approach, my dissertation investigates how the caméra-stylo has been reimagined and reconfigured, from the use of social media and smartphones by professional auteur filmmakers, to generative AI, and activist mobilography in conflict.

My aim is to produce the first dedicated study on the caméra-stylo in the social media era, by coalescing film scholarship with new technologies and trends in screen media.

Image source/attribution:
Free stock images.
Quote from: Alexandre Astruc, "The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Caméra-stylo," L'Écran français 144, 30 March 1948.

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Chang-Jung Lu | Linguistic, Speech, and Communication Sciences | Vocal and Communicative Congruence for Transgender and Gender Diverse Individuals | Provost PhD Project Awards | luc3@tcd.ie

Transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) individuals are those whose assigned gender at birth doesn’t fit their gender identities.

Speech and language pathologists (SLPs) provide voice and communication therapy to TGD individuals so their communication better represents themselves. Vocal and communicative congruence refers to the degree to which a person's voice and communication style accurately reflect who they are as a person.

Individuals who have better congruence experience greater psychological well-being. Since each client is unique, achieving optimal vocal and communicative congruence requires collaboration between SLPs and their clients.

This study aims to understand how vocal and communicative congruence is addressed during collaborative assessment and goal-setting from the perspectives of TGD individuals and SLPs, and how to reinforce it for better care to TGDs in SLP clinics.

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Charlotte Buckley | English | Modern Cartographers: Ecofeminist Readings of Contemporary Irish Women’s Poetry | Irish Research Council | bucklech@tcd.ie

My project works at the intersection of criticism and creative practice in ecofeminist poetics. I am generating both a thesis and a collection of poetry which explore gender and nature in Ireland, drawing connections between the oppression of women and the climate crisis. This research is interested in how language can function as resistance and how poetry can be read as activism during these ecocritical times. It seeks to reinforce the importance of the Arts and Humanities in finding a solution to the greatest challenge of our time, as well as discovering new ways to communicate these insights to an academic audience and the wider public through its dual aspect.

My poster challenges the viewer to critically engage with the harmful associations made between women and the earth. I have employed a photograph by the artist Ana Mendieta who was known for using her body, natural landscapes and organic materials, including flowers, feathers and blood, as the subjects of her work. This image speaks most directly to my second chapter which looks at Irish landscapes in the work of Colette Bryce, Caitríona O’Reilly, and Jessica Traynor. I argue that these poets use depictions of the land as a means to disrupt the hierarchical binaries of female/male and nature/culture, and make evident the link between gender-based violence and ecological disaster. They reconceive these dichotomies, communicating the urgency around these issues and offering new ways to think about them through the poem.

Image source/attribution: 'Imágen de Yágul', Ana Mendieta (1973)

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Chengyun Zhao | Creative Arts | An Intercultural Study of Lin Zhaohua's Dramas from the Perspective of Taoism | China Scholarship Council – Trinity College Dublin Joint Scholarship | czhao@tcd.ie

The research aims to interpret the intercultural elements in Lin Zhaohua's dramas from the perspective of Taoism, analyzing how he utilizes Taoist philosophy in his directing, what historical background pushes him to deploy Taoism in these dramas, and what he wants to express to the future through adopting Taoist philosophical ideas in these creations.

Meanwhile, the thesis attempts to harness Taoism as a tool to establish a model of intercultural performance in order to analyze the cultural exchange in mainland China since the 1980s till now.

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Chiara Marchetiello | Linguistic, Speech, and Communication Sciences | The Syntax of Gestures in the Languages of Campania | Provost’s PhD Project Award | marchetc@tcd.ie

Italy is much more than pizza, sun, and beaches. So are gestures, despite their reputation of being a cultural trait. Indeed, this is not what some linguists believe. Recent research studies in formal linguistics have shown that gestures can be integrated into the meaning of spoken utterances. Assuming a generative model of grammar, this implies that gestures can appear in syntactic representations (Jouitteau 2004; Sailor & Colasanti 2020; Colasanti 2023a,b; i.a.).

My research is part of a bigger research project entitled “GestuGram: Investigating Gestures in Southern Italy” led by Valentina Colasanti, which aims to develop a grammar of gesture by looking at the gesture-heavy languages spoken in southern Italy. In particular, GestuGram hypotheses that gestures are normal lexical morphemes that are externalised at the PF interface in the visual-gestural modality rather than in the auditory-spoken modality (speech).

I have decided to restrict my investigation to the languages spoken in Campania, one region in Southern Italy. One of my main aims is to provide further evidence in order to support the integration of gestures in spoken languages. Another aim is to elevate the status of nonstandard languages spoken in this area which are improperly known ‘dialects’ of Italian.

References:

Colasanti, V. (2023a). Functional gestures as morphemes: Some evidence from the languages of Southern Italy. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 8(1), 1-45.

Colasanti, V. (2023b). Gestural focus marking in Italo-Romance. In Trending topics in Romance linguistics, eds. Roberta Pires de Oliveira Cilene Rodrigues. Special issue of Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics, 9 (4)/5, 1-39.

Jouitteau, M. (2004). Gestures as expletives: multichannel syntax. In Chand, Vineeta & Kelleher, Ann & Rodríguez, Angelo J. & Schmeiser, Benjamin (eds.), WCCFL 23 Proceedings, 101–114. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

Sailor, C. & Colasanti, V. (2020). Co-speech gestures under ellipsis: a first look. Paper presented at the 2020 LSA Annual Meeting.

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Cian Cooney | Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies | Une Certaine Idée de l'Algerie: The Nationalist Right, The French Army and the Fight for French Algeria | TCD 1252 Postgraduate Award | cooneyci@tcd.ie

The image shows General Massu, an important French General during the Algerian War speaking into three press microphones. One of the main arguments of my PhD thesis is that the French Army repurposed totalitarian Marxist methods (e.g. brain-washing, political re-education, population control etc.) during the Algerian War against the pro-independence FLN (National Liberation Front). The 'Red Scare' title, obscuring the general's face highlights the connection to the Communists, as do the flags of the People's Republic of China and the USSR.

'Red Scare' has a double entendre here. The first being that many French officers regarded the FLN as little more than puppets of Moscow and Peking, employed as pawns in the geostrategic chess games of the Cold War against the West. The Marxists' supposed plan was to encircle Europe via North Africa, setting up anti-Western, pro-Soviet governments. The second meaning comes from the French use of the Maoist methods they encountered fighting the Viet Minh in Indochina. Were the French army becoming more revolutionary themselves? Several officers termed themselves 'National-Communist' or 'National-Socialist', and highlighted their approval of Communist totalitarian methods, mixed with a patriotic and sometimes nationalistic fervour. This also explains the tagline 'France's Cultural Revolution in Algeria'.

The War saw a political radicalisation of the officer corps, leading to two coup d'états (one successfully leading to the return of de Gaulle to power) and the formation of a pro-French Algeria terror group in part inspired by the Viet Minh called the OAS (Secret Army Organisation).

Image source: S(ervice) Historique de la D(éfense) GR/1H 2500 D3

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Conor Murphy | History & Social Work and Social Policy | Centering the Socio-Historical Experiences of Adoptive Parents in Ireland 1952-1987: An Archival and Oral History Study | Irish Research Council | cmurph97@tcd.ie

Whilst encompassing a large interdisciplinary literature, the chronicling of legal adoption in Ireland has been problematic given that its socio-cultural history has been characterised as secretive. In this challenging research environment, the most neglected constituents of the adoption triangle, which includes adopted children and birth parents, are the adoptive parents. Indeed, while the child correctly remains paramount in all adoptions, lacking in Ireland has been an incisive societal discussion about adoptive parents. This study will explore the experiences of couples who adopted children in Ireland from its legalisation in 1952 until the passing of the 1987 Status of Children Act abolishing the concept of illegitimacy. It will examine the social and cultural influences under which these people made life-changing decisions and will use these insights to view the progression of societal attitudes to adoption.

Having identified how adoption was debated and legislated in Ireland, the thesis will probe the attitudes of government, the media, religious organisations, and civil society toward adoption and adoptive parents through an analysis of written sources. Allied to this traditional archival work will be the collection of oral histories from a sample of the now ageing parents who adopted the 35,332 children during the period. These testimonies will be complemented by oral histories collected from adoption practitioners who can provide their interpretation of how the disparate convictions of others influenced the experience of potential adopters while reflecting on the nature of their own role in the process. The study will address how concepts of family and marriage, as well as religious beliefs, shaped adoptive parents’ decision-making. The project will examine if political and religious influences on adoptive parents were both assertive and omnipresent and if their impact manifests in similar or different ways when comparing twenty-first-century legacy issues with twentieth-century practices.

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Cydney Thompson | Histories and Humanities | The Work of Art in the Age of Recombinant Appropriation: Memes, Museums, and the Making of Digital Culture| thompscy@tcd.ie

This interdisciplinary research explores changes in cultural creation and consumption, particularly of heritage material, since social media has become a primary method of communicating and creating culture on a global scale.

It does this by specifically examining the function and success of ‘classical art memes,’ (CAMs) a unique reuse and oftentimes remix of digitised cultural heritage content that is currently under studied. Questions surrounding the creation and dissemination of CAMs, ranging from the application of copyright to the function of digital platforms, allow for a rich body of research that can be applied to the development of best practices in cultural heritage institutions (CHI).

This research aims to define the relationship between digital content creators and CHIs through the lens of CAMs, which act as a connection point between two very different sets of goals, ideals, and platforms. CAMs highlight how these two bodies create, disseminate, and communicate their content online. This contributes to the central research question: By analysing the creative processes of these two divergent creators of digital culture through the lens of the now widely accepted FAIR principles (which state that data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) what is learned about art (and how people engage with art) in the digital era?

Using a mixed methods approach, a model of interactions between digital content creators, CHIs, and their audiences will be crafted using the FAIR data principles as a framework for organizing data collected. A series of interviews will be conducted with digital content creators to examine their views/practices. The interview questions will be crafted with the FAIR data principles in mind, in order to probe the issues they address in academia from the unique perspectives of CHIs and digital content creators, to illuminate gaps in how culture is created and shared online.

Image source/attribution: 

https://www.wikiart.org/en/william-adolphe-bouguereau/songs-of-spring-1889 (Public Domain)

https://michelkoven.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/ulisse-aldrovandi/ (Public Domain)

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Ebru Boynuegri | Education | Relief in Mother Tongue & Arts in a Narration in an Additional Language | TCD 1252 Postgraduate Award | boynuege@tcd.ie

Translanguaging, a positive approach to using different modes in a single communication, fosters identity among speakers by creating an inclusive, safe, warm, and familiar environment (Garcia & Otheguy, 2020; Lee, 2022; Wei, 2022). This approach considers not only named languages but also different communication modes.

Inspired by this notion, in my Ph.D. project I explored translingual identity through arts-based research. In the research, I invited participants to a translingual storytelling theatre, a genre in threatre where a storyteller narrates a story in the from of a theatre (Alfreds, 2007; Winston, 2022). In the theatre, a professional storyteller from Turkiye occasionally used Turkish and other forms of communication such as singing and humour in her mainly English narration. The study involved 21 Turkish-English bilingual adults residing in Ireland. Immediately after the performance, participants engaged in an arts-based workshop that I facilitated. Reflections shared in focus groups provided immediate responses, and subsequent individual interviews offered in-depth data.

My thematic analysis revealed that the artist's use of Turkish evoked feelings of safety, relief, ease, comfort, and warmth, akin to the feelings of being at home. Similarly, participants felt at home during a specific moment when the artist sang a song in an unknown language, originally from Indigenous Americans. Despite the language being unknown to the participants, the song evoked feelings of home, with some participants explicitly mentioning the word.

On the other hand, even experienced English users described their emotions during the English parts as a struggle, attack, and fight, sometimes accompanied by anxiety about not understanding.

The findings suggest that in multilingual environments, where speakers use the majority language as an additional language, not only the use of the mother tongue but also songs, even in unknown languages, can provide moments of relief when struggling with the biting waters of the majority language.

Image source/attribution: 

Photo taken by: Nemo Castelli, S.J.

In photo: Ebru Boynuegri

References:

Alfreds, M. (2007). Different every night: Freeing the actor. Nick Hern Books.

García, O., & Otheguy, R. (2020). Plurilingualism and translanguaging: Commonalities and divergences. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 23(1), 17-35.

Lee, J. W. (2022). Translanguaging research methodologies. Research Methods in Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 100004.

Wei, L. (2022). Translanguaging as method. Research Methods in Applied Linguistics, 1(3), 100026.

Winston, J. (2022). Storytelling theatre and education. In The Routledge Companion to Drama in Education (pp. 175-184). Routledge.

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Ginevra Bianchini | English | Naked Flesh: On the Intersectional and Interdisciplinary Representation of Sexual Violence in the United Kingdom and North America | bianchig@tcd.ie

This project scrutinizes how gender and race intertwine in narratives that portray sexual violence through different disciplines: literature, TV series, and the visual arts. Geographically and culturally speaking, the research area pertains to North America and the UK, but the project also refers to works and authors from other English-speaking countries. The analysis engages with three contemporary case studies from female-identifying authors of colour: Kara Walker’s silent film "Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions" (2004, US), Katherena Vermette’s novel "The Break" (2016, Canada), and Michaela Coel’s TV series "I May Destroy You" (2020, UK).

The research is rooted in Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality (1989), an analytical approach that considers how encounters between certain social and political identities can produce discrimination or privilege. The thesis contributes to research in this field through its new comparative, intersectional, and interdisciplinary methodology, and by working with and counterposing texts and authors of colour from different cultural backgrounds. These narratives’ innovative element lies in their focus on healing and restorative justice, rather than dwelling on the trauma narrative or on a quest for reckoning. The texts relate to each other in the emphasis put on healing and resolution, highlighting different possible paths for recovery deeply rooted in their cultures of origin. These provide more self-reaffirming ways to regain sovereignty over the body, tightly linked to their non-mainstream ethnic identities: African American (Walker), Métis Indigenous Canadian (Vermette), and British African (Coel).

The thesis' analytical focus emphasises the element of healing from the trauma of sexual violence, an essential aspect normally elided from previous academic criticism or not featured in earlier primary sources from these geographical areas. Although sexual violence has been previously portrayed in these media and cultural spheres, this project focuses on present-day works to articulate how this issue still exists in our contemporaneity.

Image source/attribution: 

Michaela Coel in a promotional still for her TV series 'I May Destroy You' from the article "Review: Michaela Coel Is Riveting in 'I May Destroy You'" published in The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/arts/television/review-i-may-destroy-you.html.

Copyright of BBC, HBO, and Michaela Coel.

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Jonathan Prunty | Law | Enhancing Cybercrime Law and Policy in Ireland through Victim Engagement | Provost's PhD Project Award | jprunty@tcd.ie

This doctoral thesis critically examines the dynamic realm of cybercrime prevention and deterrence from the perspective of applied victimology. With a specific focus on the intersection of law, victim engagement, and policymaking, this research identifies barriers to effectively combating cybercriminal activities and proposes a victim-centric approach to enhance policy development.

Utilising traditional doctrinal research methods, the thesis provides a comprehensive overview of the historical context of victim involvement in crime opposition, current obstacles to victim engagement, and shortcomings in law and policy frameworks that neglect a crucial stakeholder in cybercrime prevention. By analysing legislation related to cybercrime offenses, data protection, and privacy, as well as the safeguarding of national critical infrastructure, this work critiques society's passive acceptance of cybercrime inevitability.

To counter the prevailing notion that humans are the weakest link in cybersecurity, this research investigates the impact of victim engagement on decision-making processes by drawing on a wide range of scholarship from the fields of law, victimology, policing, and public policy. Furthermore, as part of the TCD PRECYLI Project, this thesis benefits from qualitative empirical data collected through interviews and focus groups involving stakeholders from both public and private sectors. These stakeholders provide valuable insights into various aspects of cybercrime and cybersecurity, including legislative initiatives, technological advancements, insider threats, victim engagement, and victim activism.

The findings of this thesis are expected to contribute significantly to the academic discourse on cybercrime prevention and deterrence, particularly in the context of victim-centric policymaking in Ireland. Given the current dearth of literature in this area, the outcomes of this research will offer valuable insights for Irish academics and decision-makers grappling with the rapidly evolving challenges posed by cybercrime.

Image source/attribution: 

Newspaper Banner: Paul O'Kane, 'Red faces at Indigo after internet security breach' (The Irish Times, Monday 1st July 1996) Page 2.
Internet Ireland Advertisement: Company dissolved in 1995.
Chatbox: Generated by Jonathan Prunty.

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Lucy McSweeney | Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies | Translating Non-Human Interactions via Digital Means to Human Understanding | Kinsella Challenge-Based E3 Multidisciplinary Project Awards | mcsweelu@tcd.ie

In the age of the Anthropocene, as we face planetary crises and the previous ways of being are becoming undone, we must re-examine our relationships with the more-than-human world for the better. Our constructions of the world, and the boundaries we create or destroy impact how we relate with and interact with the more-than-human. How do we communicate with other entities on the planet? How do we listen and respond to what they are telling us? What does this look like? If translation can be considered communication across difference (Cronin, 2017) then translation is crucial for understanding contemporary environmental challenges and fostering more sustainable relationships with the more-than-human world.

This study delves into the diverse processes employed by scientific researchers to convey information derived from the more-than-human world in a comprehensible manner for human communities. Employing an ethnographic approach, the focus is on researchers within multidisciplinary teams centred around biodiversity at Trinity College Dublin.

The findings reveal a spectrum of methods utilised by researchers, including mathematical and programming languages, alongside other techniques and technologies, to extract and transform information into meaningful insights for human understanding and action. Examples range from translating bird calls and insect wing beats into visual representations to rendering birds through video into pixels, recording and modelling ecological disasters into graphical formats, and translating the services and values of forests or other land types into monetary terms. The information gathered is read, interpreted and acted upon accordingly. This study wants to understand the processes and choices that are made in constructing knowledge and what we do with it.

References: 

Cronin, M. (2017). Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene. London. Routledge.

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Maria Dimitropoulou | Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences | Exploring the Motivations and Language Experiences of Irish-speaking Families from Diverse Backgrounds | TCD Postgraduate Research Studentship & A.G. Leventis Foundation Scholarship | dimitrom@tcd.ie

Have you ever taken a moment to reflect on the languages in your life? Close your eyes and cast your mind back to childhood – what languages filled your world then? Now, fast forward to recent weeks. What languages dominated your interactions? Think about what influences your language choices and how using them makes you feel. Have you noticed any changes over time?

In Ireland, Irish is constitutionally the first official language and a compulsory subject in schools. However, its active usage beyond the education system is limited to a small portion of the population. English, on the other hand, remains the dominant language, often even in traditionally Irish-speaking regions, known as the Gaeltacht. The 20-Year Strategy for the Irish Language 2010–2030 underscores Ireland's official policy goal: fostering bilingualism in both Irish and English among its citizens. The strategy also prioritises preserving the linguistic identity of Gaeltacht regions as distinct language areas, acknowledging the prevailing influence of English within these communities.

My doctoral research focuses on families choosing to embrace Irish within their homes, contrary to the prevailing linguistic norms in Ireland’s increasingly multilingual landscape. It aims to explore the motivations, experiential dimensions, and emotional underpinnings of such language choices, while examining their interplay with identity and belonging, as well as external influences such as official language policies, revitalisation efforts, and family dynamics. Based on these, it aims to situate language choices within the wider sociopolitical and cultural context, recognising the dynamic, fluid, multifaceted and context-dependent nature of identity.

The project involves an online family background questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with parents or other caregivers and children from 35 families across 13 counties in Ireland. Its goal was to encompass a wide array of experiences and viewpoints by including families from diverse backgrounds. Primarily, the emphasis is on parents who were not raised in Irish-speaking households themselves.

This study hopes to contribute to ongoing discussions surrounding language revitalisation efforts and inform more inclusive language policies in Ireland. At a broader level, the project aspires to address questions concerning the rationale behind promoting minority languages and the individuals or groups expected to benefit from language revitalisation efforts. These questions have often been overlooked in prior research which tended to focus on the strategies employed in language maintenance and revitalisation efforts and their potential for achieving ‘positive’ outcomes.

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Maria Kane | Histories and Humanities | What would be the Position of our People Today without the Irish White Cross? 1921-28 | Irish Research Council | makane@tcd.ie

Violence escalated in Ireland in late November 1920. Cowed by terrorism, an estimated 100,000 non-combatants were destitute across the island due to conflict-related violence by year's end. Yet strangely, the most significant development in response to that destruction, destitution, murder, maiming, and incarceration, the Irish White Cross, has been overlooked in the historiography of the Irish Revolution.

Officially inaugurated in February 1921 by the Lord Mayor of Dublin Laurence O'Neill organisationally, the Irish White Cross attracted support and activism from across the denominational, class, and political spectrum. Alleged to have found common ground in an underlying sense of moral duty, the Organisation was undoubtedly nationalist in its character.

The Irish White Cross was an influential force with the undermentioned representative of the many notaries involved: Cardinal Michael Logue (President), Trustees Molly Childers, Kathleen Clarke, Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith, and AE/George Russell. Standing Executive Committee: Erskine Childers, W.T. Cosgrave, Darrell Figgis, Maud Gonne-MacBride, Elgin O'Rahilly.

Supported by American relief funds totalling over $5,000,000 and an estimated six hundred parish committees nationwide, it is argued that aggressive revolution was only sustainable due to the Irish White Cross relief programme, the consequences of which families were often left to deal with for the remainder of their lives. The research is of interest not only to historians of Ireland but also to all historians of humanitarianism in revolution and conflict, with potential application in other national contexts and broader lessons for the present.

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Morgiane Noel | Law | Overcoming the Legal Impasse: The Creation of a Legal Framework for the Protection of Climate Migrants from an International Human Rights Perspective | Frances E. Moran Scholarship | mnoel@tcd.ie

As our societies are considering the issues related to climate change, it is important to note that this also has significant implications for the legal world. To seek protection for climate migrants, various areas of law (International Environmental Law, Refugee Law, and Human Rights) must be examined. Nevertheless, the lack of a relevant protection framework requires the creation of an efficient international framework of laws that can guarantee the protection of people forced to leave their homes due to environmental disasters.

This research aims to address the current gaps in the existing legal framework and to suggest a relevant solution arising from human rights grounds enshrined in international and regional legal instruments. The Right to Life (including the notion of living with dignity), the Right to Private Life, and the right to be considered under the Law and have access to remedies before a relevant Tribunal will be examined in this context.

My research's final chapters will explore the scope of these rights and their potential to resolve the legal challenges of protecting climate migrants.

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Rachel Killeen | Histories and Humanities | Professional Married Women and their Work (1965-1985) | killeera@tcd.ie

This research project contributes a valuable oral history perspective narrated by married women who gained significant experience in professional careers in accountancy, education, medicine, media, law and politics, from the 1960s to the 1980s. Many of those who were interviewed were also activists, who campaigned for women's rights during the era of second-wave feminism in Ireland.

Image source/attribution: 

Artist Dorothy Wilson from Women's Political Association (WPA) Journal 1978

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Rafael Mendes Silva | Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies | Disidentification, (Non)Normativity and the Gothic in Contemporary Latin American Women’s Writing | Rachel Thompson Ussher Fellowship | silvar@tcd.ie

By analysing a selection of texts written by preeminent contemporary women writers from across Latin America, the aim of this doctoral project is twofold: first, it will theorise the Latin American Gothic at the intersection of the grotesque and queer studies as the recreation of a literary genre which has yet to receive full critical attention in the context of the region and its more recent literary production by women writers; second, it will investigate why this tendency has been reformulated in the Latin American context and to what effect, particularly to show how grotesque disidentification give voice to marginalised individuals, through working in and against dominant ideologies and by the portrayal of non-normative bodies, identities and sexualities that challenge the heteropatriarchal order.

Similarly, this thesis will engage with and put to the test theories from literary, queer/cuir, crip, and feminist studies. In doing so, it aims to address the following key research questions: how can non-normative bodies contest power and reclaim agency by reinventing a traditional Western genre, which has historically reflected the hidden desires and anxieties of a social group; how can the Gothic Grotesque be defined in the context of more recent Latin American literary production; how is literary production set in the Global South challenging and redrafting the boundaries of literary theory produced in the Global North?

Upon completion, the research should serve as a new roadmap for the field of Latin American studies, examining critically why, in the twenty-first century, the circumstances are ripe for what I view as an emerging hybrid literary genre used particularly by women writers. I specifically select ‘women’ and not just ‘female’ writers as this project will also lead to engagement with current debates on identity, literary and transgender studies.

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Sadhbh Crean | Education | Perspectives on Engaged Research in Materials Science: A Quadruple Helix Approach | Science Foundation Ireland | creansa@tcd.ie

Aligning with international calls for participatory science to enhance the voice of the public across science, technology, and knowledge-production (Campus Engage Ireland, 2022; Robinson et al., 2021; SFI, 2021), this research presents a case study of how multi-stakeholder, quadruple helix (Carayannis & Campbell, 2009), Engaged Research is perceived and operationalised to maximise societal and environmental impact within research projects at the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Advanced Materials and Bioengineering Research (AMBER) and beyond. Engaged Research refers to a broad range of research approaches and methodologies that involve working with multiple stakeholders (Holliman, 2017).

A qualitative research design was implemented, collecting data from participants using semi-structured interviews and following an iterative research process (Hoffman et al., 2019). The results so far outline the key challenges and drivers of forming inclusive, cross-disciplinary relationships, co-creating, and acting on collaborative goals to address societal challenges, and multi-stakeholder participation from research conception to evaluation and dissemination.

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Soraya Afzali | Languages, Literatures, and Cultural Studies | The Role of Charismatic Authority in Propagation of Hate | European Union, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions | afzalis@tcd.ie

This project investigates the relationship between the emotions undergirding the practice of hate and the construction and influence of formal and informal authority in the European context. Increasingly “hateful ideologies” are propagated by right-wing propagandists, religious fanatics, and extreme left groups. This project seeks to study the role and origins of charismatic authority in propagating hate. In a top-down approach, this project looks into sermons and political speeches to draw a topography of actors who agitate hate.

In a bottom-up approach, this project investigates the experiences of hate, and methods of countering hate by Persian-speaking diasporas in Germany, Austria, and Ireland. Through qualitative interviews with Persian-displaced people in the countries mentioned, this project maps the juxtaposition of persuasion through emotions in both approaches. This project will employ an interdisciplinary methodology composed of discourse analysis, and cultural, socio-religious, and socio-political studies.

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Xueting Zhang | Linguistics, Speech and Communication Sciences | The Professional Development of Public Service Interpreters: An Anatomy of its Nested Systems | zhangx12@tcd.ie

Public Service Interpreting (PSI) in the EU is crucial for guaranteeing equal access to public services for non-native speakers and individuals with limited proficiency in the local language. But it encounters several challenges, including inconsistent quality arising from a lack of regulation, a shortage of qualified interpreters, insufficient training and professional development opportunities, inadequate funding, among other factors.

Mikkelson (1996) identified key strategies to address the quality issue of public service interpreting: institutionalizing formal training programs, establishing professional associations, educating the public and clients on the importance of hiring professional interpreters, fostering good relationships with authorities, and developing certification programs. These strategies mirror the success pathways of long-established professions such as the practice of medicine and law.

Professionalisation, through specified academic education, builds trust with clients and provides protection for practitioners, incentivising them to go through intense and specialised training processes. However, the feasibility of achieving similar professionalisation in today’s society is questionable. Specifically, the push by PSI to mandate university-trained interpreters may face significant challenges.

To better understand and navigate the barriers in PSI, we must recognise that traditional professionalisation approaches might not be fully applicable. A nuanced understanding of these barriers and their interrelations is essential for developing effective strategies in the contemporary context.