I joined the University of Galway as a Lecturer in German in January 2026. Prior to that, I was a Lecturer in German at the University of Oxford (2023-25) and a postdoctoral research fellow in German and Comparative Literature at St John’s College, Oxford (2025-26).

I grew up in Co. Donegal and attended my local Gaelscoil before moving to Dublin for a BA in English and German at TCD. After graduating in 2017, I completed an MSt in German at Oxford in 2018 and a PhD in Comparative Literature at TCD in 2023. I’ve also spent stretches of time along the way in Freiburg (DAAD scholarship, 2014-15), Innsbruck, and Vienna.

My research interests are mostly in modern and contemporary literature and in the area of environmental humanities, including animal studies, ideas of ecological aesthetics, and postcolonial responses to the climate and biodiversity crises. I am also interested in discussions of comparative literature and world literature more broadly; debates around translation, multilingualism, and identity; and the intersection between literature and philosophy. Many of the German-language authors I'm especially drawn to are Austrian, including Ingeborg Bachmann, (arguably!) Franz Kafka, Christoph Ransmayr, Thomas Bernhard, and Marlen Haushofer. On the comparative side, I've worked on authors such as Richard Flanagan, Olga Tokarczuk, Han Kang, and Marina Carr. As an Irish speaker, I've recently begun to focus more on the role of minoritised languages within world literature and their relationship to specific local habitats and ecologies.

At Galway, I teach courses on German Literature and Ecology (final year), Romanticism (second year) and Advanced Translation (MA). My previous teaching includes a Master's module on Posthuman Subjectivities, which I co-taught with Prof. Barry Murnane at Oxford (2025-26); lecture courses on Franz Kafka, Writing After Auschwitz, and German literature since 1945; and a special seminar on Ingeborg Bachmann’s novel Malina. I especially enjoy teaching topics related to the environmental humanities, questions of identity, and authors including Kafka, Rilke, Bachmann, Brecht, Bernhard, Haushofer, Sebald, Ruth Klüger and Yoko Tawada.