'IRCHSS Awards' - Scheme 2: Postdoctoral Fellowship 2006

Assessment Board Members

Postdoctoral Fellowships were awarded to the following applicants for 2006-2007

 

Dr. Barry Crosbie - NUIG
Irish Imperial Networks: Migration, Social Communication and Exchange in British South and Southeast Asia, c.1780-1922

This project examines Irish imperial networks in British South and Southeast Asia. It argues that Ireland was a crucial sub-imperial centre that provided a significant amount of the raw manpower, intellectual and financial capital that fuelled Britain’s drive into Asia during the second phase of imperial expansion from the 1780’s onwards.

 

Dr. Derek Dorris - UCD
Investigating conscious and unconscious-based suppression failure and its impact on obsessional thinking.

This project primarily aims to demonstrate two different forms of control failure (conscious-based and unconscious-based) that arise from the use of thought suppression. The project further aims to demonstrate that both forms of control failure can emerge during suppression of obsession-like thoughts indicating that suppression underlies obsessive-compulsive disorder.

 

Dr. Porscha Fermanis - UCD
Romantic Pasts: The Politics of Historical Representation in British Romantic Literature, 1790-1840

This project will examine historiographical practices in British Romantic writing in order to demonstrate that debates about the past, and in particular about Enlightenment attitudes towards the past, provided an ideal forum for Romantic acts of political self-definition.

 

Dr. Alison FitzGerald - UCD
Craft in Crisis? The Silversmiths’ Trade in Post-Union Dublin

This project investigates the implications for Dublin’s silver trade of critical political, economic and social developments in the wake of the Act of Union. It examines levels of demand for plate, the competitive realities of free trade, and networks of patronage in a city dominated by a newly empowered bourgeoisie.

 

Dr. Joseph J. Flahive – UCC
The Ó Cléirigh Leabhar Gabhála Éireann

This project will prepare from the manuscripts, (most importantly RIA 24M70 and 23K32), a diplomatic text and translation of the largely unedited recension of Leabhar Gabhála Éireann bu Micheal Ó Cléirigh, one of the “Four Masters” for publication as a dual-language resource.

 

Dr. Niav Gallagher - TCD
The Order of Friars Minor throughout the British Isles, 1230-1400

This project aims to expand the original research of my doctoral thesis for publication. It will provide an examination of the Franciscans in medieval Ireland, the location of their friaries and aspects of patronage, using a multi-disciplinary approach. This research will enable comparisons to be drawn between Irish friars and their Scottish, English and Welsh confreres.

 

Dr. Jim Kelly - UCD
Charles Robert Maturin and Cultural Nationalism

An examination of the works of Charles Maturin in the context of cultural nationalism in the Romantic period, particularly in Ireland and Scotland. This project would take full account of developments in the study of Romantic period fiction and the intellectual and cultural links between Ireland and Scotland.

 

Dr. Wenchuan Liu - UL
The impact of job security on the adoption of high performance work systems in unionized firms

This project is designed to answer two main questions. The first is, what is the impact of unions on the adoption of high performance work systems (HPWS)?. The second is, whether improved job security can moderate the union-HPWS relationship. Two international journal articles and a book are expected outputs.

 

Dr. Angelina Lynch - UCD
The Literature of Early Modern Ireland: a Textual Editing Project

This project involves editing some of the key literary texts in English from the seventeenth-century Ireland. This will involve transcribing the texts from the manuscript or only printed edition, editing and annotating them. Four Courts Press have agreed to publish the texts as a series entitled ‘The Literature of Early Modern Ireland’.

 

Dr. Marcas Mac Coinnigh - UCC
A Dictionary of Modern Irish Proverbs

This project involves the compilation of the first definitive dictionary of Modern Irish proverbs together with English translations. Proverbs will be classified, annotated and arranged systematically according to key headwords. A comprehensive keyword index, cross-reference system and bibliography shall also be created.

 

Dr. Breda McCabe - UCD
The Irish Workplace: Components of Flexibility, Performance and Partnership:

This study will focus on the current employment situation and workplace experiences of jobholders, drawing predominantly upon employment flexibility and high performance work systems literatures. Drawing on both approaches will provide a more complete picture of the quality of work life.

 

Dr. Ted Greer McCormick - NUIG
The Politics of Irish Populations, 1641-1691

This project will explore how Irish political crises between 1641 and 1691 shaped qualitative and quantitative ideas about different Irish populations, how these ideas were deployed in political argument and polemic, and how this process shaped both Irish politics and emergent forms of social science and social engineering.

 

Dr. Peter John McLoughlin - UCD
John Hume and the Revision of Irish Nationalism:

This project would build on my doctoral analysis of the development of Hume’s political ideology in the 1960s and 1970s tracing the further evolution of his thinking in the 1980s and 1990s, and engaging with debates on contemporary nationalism in the process.

 

Dr. Bernice Murphy - TCD
National Nightmares: Gothic Depictions of American Suburbia from 1948- 2005

This book-length project will analyse depictions of American suburbia in selected gothic and horror-themed novels, films and television shows. The study will discuss these texts from within a historicizing, contextualising framework which will also consider the evolving nature of suburbia and the wider cultural significance of the many gothic responses the milieu has evoked over the past sixty years.

 

Dr. Cordula Politis - TCD
A Study of the Amazon-Myth in Medieval German Literature

This study will provide the first comprehensive account of the Amazon-myth in medieval German literature. It will focus on the historical reception of the myth, its place in courtly and sacred literature, and its geographical representations. In particular, it will evaluate the significance of the myth from the point of view of gender studies and theories of alterity and interculturality.

 

Dr. Mathew Potter - UL
Urban Government and civic cultures in Ireland since 1800

This will be the first major synthesis of Irish local government and the development of civic cultures over the past two hundred years. The study included discussion of medium and small towns, as well as Ireland’s cities and larger towns.

 

Dr. Holly Rogers - UCD
Video Installation Art: Am Aural-Visual Convergence

This project will challenge the widely held belief that video installation is a visual artform; argue instead that it is the result of a musical and artistic convergence in the late 1960s; and theorise for it a method of analysis able to engage with audio-visual narratives.

 

Dr. Sandra Scanlon - UCD
National Review, Modern American Conservatism and US Foreign Policy, 1955-1976

This innovative study analyses conservative foreign policy from the founding of National Review, a leading body policy formulation, to the emergence of the neoconservative Committee on the Present Danger. It considers the political factors and international events that influenced policy, and thus accentuate the relationship between ideology and political organisation.

 

Dr. Aine Sheil - TCD
Intersection, Influence and Dependence: the relationship between arts policy and theatre practice in contemporary Ireland

This research project examines the nature of the intersection between official arts policy and theatre practice in contemporary Ireland. It updates existing studies on arts policy and analyzes all aspects of theatre practise in the light of policy, thus bringing elements together that have not yet been adequately linked.

 

Dr. Carol Taaffe - TCD
Ireland through the Looking-Glass: Brian O’ Nolan and Irish Cultural Debate, 1931-1945

This project investigates how Irish cultural debate informed O’Nolan early fiction and journalism, in both Irish and English. It offers the first thorough assessment of his work in the Irish context, arguing that his self-reflexive comic writing betrays a crisis of identity rooted in the cultural dynamics of post-independence Ireland.

Funded by the Irish Government under the National Development Plan 2000-2006.