Frances McCormack

Dr Frances McCormack (she/her) holds a PhD from Trinity College Dublin (fully funded by an Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences Scholarship); an MA in Old and Middle English Language and Literature from UCD; an MA in Academic Practice from NUI Galway (now University of Galway); a BA from Maynooth; Diplomas in Irish and Spanish from NUI Galway (now University of Galway); and a Certificate in Autism Studies from University College Cork. 

Frances is also a multi-award-winning teacher. In 2010, she won the President's Award for Teaching Excellence from NUI Galway (now University of Galway); in 2011, the National Award for Excellence in Teaching; in 2015, the President's Award for Teaching Excellence in NUI Galway (now University of Galway); in 2020, she won a College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Celtic Studies Teaching Excellence Award, as well as the President's Award for Teaching Excellence both from NUI Galway (now University of Galway), and in 2021 she won the Teaching Hero Award from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

With a breadth of research interests  from Old English emotions to modernist literature, Frances is particularly interested in literary representations of emotions and is currently working on a series of articles and a monograph on emotions in Finnegans Wake.

She has served as the director of the International Graham Greene Festival and a trustee on the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust, and the secretary of Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland. She has directed the MA in English, and is currently co-directing the MA in Medieval and Antiquity, as well as co-directing the Centre for Antique, Medieval, and Pre-Modern Studies at the University of Galway. She is the founder of the Neurodivergent Staff Network at the University of Galway.

• The Senses in Literature
• Literary Emotions
• Literary Representations of Neurodivergence
• James Joyce's Finnegans Wake
• Inclusive Pedagogy
• Neuroaffirming Pedagogy
• Assessment

• Old English Language
• Old English Literature
• Middle English Literature
• Emotions in Literature
• Animals in Literature
• Literary Animal Studies 
• James Joyce's Finnegans Wake
• Autism in Literature