An Introduction

I studied at the University of Münster, Liverpool John Moores University, and Université Rennes II, gaining Master’s degrees in Modern History, Cultural Studies, as well as Irish and British Studies. I am now studying for a Master of Arts in Un/Sustainable Societies at the University of Groningen, where my research focuses on memory, migration, and second-generation Irish identity in Britain.

In addition, I am a Senior Lecturer in EAP, Business English, and Business Ethics at the University of Applied Sciences Münster. I teach across several bachelor’s and master’s programmes and contribute to curriculum and materials development, quality assurance, and thesis supervision. I am also closely involved in research methods and academic writing within the faculty, particularly in relation to research development and ethical standards.

My own research is situated in social, cultural, and community history, with a particular interest in migration, memory, identity, and belonging. It draws on relevant approaches from sociology, psychology, and sociocultural anthropology to examine how people interpret family backgrounds, cultural affiliations, and experiences of political conflict. I am especially interested in adolescence as a formative stage during which inherited meanings encounter new social relationships and settings.

My current research focuses on second-generation Irish people who grew up in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s. Using oral-history interviews, I will examine how they remember encountering and interpreting Irishness within their families and across schools, peer groups, neighbourhoods, community spaces, and wider British society. Family stories, silences, everyday practices, visits to Ireland, religion, and cultural activities all form part of this history. The Troubles provide an important political context, but my research does not assume that conflict dominated every experience or that young people of Irish background necessarily felt divided between two identities. Instead, I ask when Irishness became meaningful, visible, difficult, or irrelevant, and how these experiences have been reinterpreted later in life.

A related strand of my research examines how Irish identity was shaped and contested among young people in the Republic of Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s. I am particularly interested in those who experienced adolescence as terrorist attacks in Dublin and elsewhere made political violence increasingly present within the Republic itself. The experience of violence directed at people because of their perceived national or religious affiliation, together with the economic crisis that began in the late 1970s, created a distinctive setting in which Irishness was understood and experienced. In my PhD research, starting next year, these experiences will form the basis for a comparative analysis with those of teenagers of Irish origin growing up in Britain during the same period. This comparison will explore how Irishness was interpreted and negotiated in two different but closely connected social and political environments.

Further research interests are inter-community relations, post-conflict reconstruction, as well as criminal and crowd psychology, particularly in how crowds respond to perceived threats at major events. I am involved with some related research networks, e.g. the group "Transnational Memory and Identity" at the Council for European Studies, the Conflict Research Society, the Association of Critical Heritage Studies, and the British International Studies Association.