Teddy Lehre Wins ACIS Prize
Teddy Lehre won the ACIS 2025 Krause Research Fellowship for their project “Alternative Motherhoods in Twentieth- and Twenty-first Century Irish Literature.” This project identifies how alternative motherhoods challenge the foundations of Irish society, both the “bad” alternative mothers who disrupt the entire concept of motherhood and the “good” alternative mothers, who nonetheless challenge the status quo.
Congratulations to our 2026 grads!
Congratulations to our 2026 MA grads: Quinn Fisher, Liam Schmidt, and Regis Reed.
Irish Studies Grads Win Von Hendy Award for Graduate Student Writing
Irish Studies graduate students have won the Von Hendy Award for Graduate Student Writing at both the PhD and the MA levels. PhD student Jessica Oyler won for her paper titled "O’Brien’s Other Country Girl: A Post-Dobbs Analysis of Down by the River," and MA student Quinn Fisher won for her paper titled "Big House Bodies: Reading Animality in Keane and Johnston."
Comhfhios 2026 - Violence: Legacies of Conflict in Ireland
In February 2026, BC graduate students hosted the ninth annual Comhfhios conference. This year's theme, 'Violene: Legacies of Conflict in Irealnd,' drew participants from across America, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and India. Violence and its representations are a key area of inquiry in Irish Studies, and students addressed this topic in various ways. The conference's keynote speaker was Jay Rozman of University College Cork.
Irish Studies Grads at Regional ACIS
BC Irish Studies graduate students presented at the regional ACIS conference at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
Congrats to Tess Keotting, Quinn Fisher, and Jessica Oyler on their fantastic presentations!!
A Part to Play at the Burns Library
This summer, PhD student Paloma Carroll-Ryan completed an internship at the Burns Library. She designed and installed a physical exhibition for the Irish Room, as well as creating a corresponding digital exhibit. Titled A Part to Play, the exhibition draws on collections from the Burns Library and explores the cultural sphere of the Troubles.
2025-2026 Dalsimer Fellowship Awarded to Tiffany Thompson
Tiffany Thompson was named the 2025/2026 Dalismer Fellow. Her dissertation, “Fleeing the Troubles: Gendering Violence, Displacement, and Migration in Northern Ireland, 1969-1976,” centers an analysis of women and their distinctive experiences of violence and displacement during conflict-related migration during the Troubles.
Cassidy Allen at IASIL in Galway
Cassidy Allen presented her work at the International Association of Studies in Irish Literature at the University of Galway. Her paper was titled “Technology in Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times.” The paper examined miscommunication and identity curation in relation to technology in the two aforementioned novels. It also focused on surveillance culture in Ireland and utilized social media scholarship to demonstrate how technology reinforces traditional gender ideals for women.
MA Students Summer in Europe
MA students Quinn Fisher and Liam Schmidt participated in Professor Nugent's Joyce conference in Paris, celebrating Bloomsday in style! The two spent time in Dublin and also participated in a week-long Irish language program in Gleann Cholm Cille.
Doctorate Awarded, Daniel Crown
In July, Daniel Crown defended his dissertation, “The Immigrant Revolution: Rhenish and Scots-Irish Collonists, Western Expansion, and the Remaking of British North America (1740-1775),” chaired by Owen Stanwood. This fall, he begins a position as a visiting assistant professor in BC’s history department.
Teddy Lehre, Ireland and France
Teddy Lehre joined the Kylemore Summer School in Irish Studies, organized by Notre Dame. Meant to bring graduate students in various fields together with leading figures in scholarship, the arts, culture, and politics, Teddy spent a week in Kylemore Abbey and a week in Paris.
Summer Archival Research in 2025
We helped several PhD students travel to Ireland for archival research this summer!
Rowan Bianchi explored the 19th-century State of the Country Papers and material from the Chief Secretary's Office Registered Papers Collection, hoping to access relevant material to help turn their master's thesis into a dissertation chapter.
Jessica Oyler examined the judicial decisions of the High Court in the 1960s regarding the Constitutional definition of the Irish Family and mediation of parents' rights. She focused specifically on documents related to the Guardianship of Infants Act.
Johanna Alden examined high and late medieval manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy and at Trinity College, Dublin. She saw the Book of Fermoy and the Annals of Ulster, contextualizing her research on gender, transness, family foundation, and monstrous femininity.
Paloma Carroll-Ryan travelled to Belfast to visit the Public Research Office of Northern Ireland. She examined material on community development and community relations projects, considering how top-down attempts at peacemaking interacted with grassroots initiatives.
First BC/QUB Graduate Student Exchange
As part of our first graduate student exchange with Queen's University Belfast, PhD candidate Tiffay Thompson delivered a seminar at the Northern Irish university. Titled "Belfast Barridades & Burns-out Homes: Women Navigating Street Violence and Displacement in August 1969," Thompson's seminar discussed part of her larger project exploring the gendered violence of Norhtern Ireland's Troubles.
Teddy Lehre at ACIS 2025
Teddy Lehre participated in the annual ACIS conference, held in Savannah, Georgia in February of 2025. Teddy presented on their dissertation research, delivering a paper titled 'Cathleen Ni Houlihan and the Death Drive.'
Comhfhios 2025 - Hibernia Beyond Humans
In February 2025, BC graduate students hosted the eighth annual Comhfhios conference. This year's theme, 'Hibernia Beyond Humans: The Rise of Environmental Humanities in Irish Studies,' gathered graduate students from across America and the United Kingdom to discuss the interactions and relationships between human actors, nonhuman actors, and the environments across Ireland and her diasporas. The keynote was delivered by Malcolm Sen from UMass Amherst.
2024-2025 Dalsimar Fellowship Awarded to Daniel Crown
Daniel Crown has been named the 2024/2025 Dalsimer Fellow. Tentatively titled "The Immigrant Revolution: Irish and Rhenish Farmers and the Politics of Western Expansion, 1740-1780," Daniel’s dissertation tells a quintessentially American story. Detailing the seemingly inspirational ways Irish and German-speaking immigrants used the American Revolution to overcome voter suppression and level representation within popularly-elected legislatures, the book also describes how this process streamlined western expansion and the dispossession of Native lands.
The book tracks the economic and political development of a contiguous string of immigrant counties from western Pennsylvania through South Carolina, and the emergence of an immigrant political platform rooted in emigration rationales, clashes with Native Nations amid the Seven Years’ War, and electoral contests with eastern oligarchs who feared western counties threatened their control over local government. In describing how immigrants leveraged their numbers to secure concessions from early-state governments and gain long-sought-after access to the Ohio Country, the book reveals the uncomfortable ties between proto-democracy and anti-Native xenophobia.
Dan Dougherty Defends Dissertation
In June 2023/2024 Dalsimer Fellow Dan Dougherty defended his dissertation titled "Growing Up Globally: Form and Genre in the Anglophone Bildungsroman," chaired by Rob Lehman. This fall, he will begin a position as a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Florida, working and teaching in the Writing Program.
Irish Studies Grad Students at ACIS 2024
The Irish Studies graduate students had a busy summer! Tiffany Thompson, Malama Wilson, Cassidy Allen, Emily Dupuis, Megan Crotty, Teddy Lehre, and Paloma Carroll-Ryan all attended the national American Conference of Irish Studies (ACIS) conference in Limerick.
Congratulations to our 2024 graduates!
Congratulations to everyone who graduated in 2024!
English: Julia Adamo & Shelby Jones
History: Sean Goodman & Rachael Young
Comhfhios 2024 - Éire's Ireland
This spring, BC graduate students will host the seventh annual Comhfhios conference. This year’s theme, “Éire’s Ireland: Shifting Visions of Performance & Positionality,” will convene scholars from North America, the Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland to investigate the historic and literary constructions and performances of identity in Ireland and the diaspora. Elizabeth Brewer Redwine, lecturer of English at Seton Hall University, will give the keynote address.
MA Students & Summer Scholarship
Our MA English students were busy this summer! Shelby Jones spent a week studying Irish at the Oideas Gael center in Donegal and Julia Adamo conducted literary reserachin Dublin.
2023-2024 Dalsimar Fellowship Awarded to Daniel Dougherty
The Dalsimar Felloswhip for the 2023-2024 academic year has been awarded to Dainiel Dougherty. A Ph.D. canndidate in the English Department, Dan's dissertation - tentatively titled Collisions: Time, Genre, and Form in the Anglophone Bildungsroman - argues for a reading of the Anglophone coming-of-age novel as a series of formal experiments which combine and repurpose various established literary genres, both troubling and bolstering the development narrative through the twentieth century.
Rather than reading the Bildungsroman as a form hewed close to geographic borders or strict periodization, he argues that, by approaching the coming-of-age novel through the lens of the affordances and limitations that various generic permutations provide, new constellations of Bildungsromane emerge: not national, but rather a series of global texts which share the biographical novel as a formal container which helps make sense of modernity and the perceived passage of time.
Doctorate Awarded, Rachael Young
Rachael Young defended her dissertation, 'Less Violent But No Less Visible: Criminalization and Community Murals in Brixton and Belfast, 1970-1989,' on Thursday, July 20 in Connolly House.
In her dissertation, Rachael explored the connections and solidarity between the Black community of Brixton and the republican community of Belfast during the 1970s and 1980s. Her work analyzes the use of criminalization against both minority communities as well as these comunities' use of murals as activist tools to combat criminalization. Rachael will begin a post-doc with BC Irish Studies in the fall.
BC Graduate Students at 2023 National ACIS
Two of our graduate students participated in the 2023 National ACIS conference in San Jose, California this summer!
Tiffany Tomphson, "Fleeing the Troubles: Urban Violence, Refugee Crisis, and Women's Experiences of the Troubles, 1969-1974"
Rowan Bianchi, "The Right Justice Captain Rock: Law, Violence, and Policing in an Irish Agrarian Insurgencey"
Irish Studies 2023 Graduates!
Congratulations to our graduating Irish Studies MA studuents! We cannot wait to see what you do next!
Tess Koetting
Katherine Reardon
Abigail Harris
Jessica Oyler
Rowan Bianchi
Comhfhios 2023 - 'Queering Hibernia'
The sixth annual Comhfhios conference of Boston College Irish Studies graduate students occured on Saturday, Febuary 25. The theme of the conference was 'Queering Hibernia: Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Ireland and Her Diasporas' with a keynote address from Dr. Leanne McCormick of Ulster University.
We welcomed graduate students from universities across the United States, Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland, to present their original research. The panels covered a sweeping range of topics, from medieval female kinship to turn-of-the-century Irish-American boxing, from Irish witch trials to depictions of Queen Maeve in pop culture. Comhfhios 2023 privileges the stories of women and queer communities, exemplifying the work of the future generation of Irish Studies scholars.
Archeology: Summer Fieldwork
Two of our graduate students spent the summer digging around in Ballintober, Countery Roscommon!
Trevor Wiley: Trevor attended an archaeological field school in County Roscommon, where he worked as part of the Castles in Communities project on a medieval castle and village in the town of Ballintober. In addition to excavating on the site, he was also able to visit many of the local historic sites, including Knocknarea, Rath Cruachan and the Carrowkeel Passage Tombs.
Rachel Brody: Rachel spent several months this summer in Europe researching and presenting at the MERC postgraduate and early career conference in medieval archaeology in Prague. Additionally, during July, she excavated with a group of 70 American and Irish students in Ballintober, County Roscommon, Ireland.
Graduate Students at Regional ACIS
Three of our history graduate students presented at the Mid-Atlantic/New England Regional ACIS, hosted by St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia from October 14-15.
Rowan Bianchi, “The Origins of Rockite Disturbances: An Exploration of Limerick Sources”
Sean Goodman, “Revolutionary Russia and Ireland, 1916-1924”
Rachael Young, “Pandemic Graduate Work: Preserving Through the Pivot,” Roundtable
2022-2023 Dalsimer Fellowship Awarded to Rachael Young
Rachael Young is the recipient of the 2022-2023 Adele Dalsimer Fellowship. A Ph.D. candidate in history, Rachael’s dissertation explores the role of community murals as activist tools in 1980s England and Ireland. Her work examines the use of murals in post-hunger strike Belfast and post-uprising Brixton, arguing that murals became a less violent but no less visible tool for both nationalist and Black communities to battle the negative narrative of criminalization imposed upon them by the British government.
Tiffany Thompson Awarded Mulitple ACIS Prizes
The 2022-2023 ACIS Ann Owens Weekes Prize for a graduate paper in Women's Studies and/or Intersectional Studies was awarded to Tiffany Tompson's ACIS conference paper: "A 'Proletarian Protest' in Parliament: Bernadette Devlin and the Memory of Bloody Sunday."
Tiffany also won the 2022-2023 John & Pat Hume Foundation Fellowship for her proposed dissertation that will research "how the Trobles was understood in the early 1970s as shaped by gendered hierarchies of power."
Summer 2022 Language Programs
Many of our graduate students spent time working on the Irish language skills this past summer.
Rowan Bianchi: This summer Rowan spent three weeks in Ireland. In Dublin, they explored the archives looking for primary sources for their master’s thesis. After two weeks, they went to County Donegal to take a week-long course with Gael Linn to improve their Irish skills. Their favorite new word they learned is “ceo” which means fog: a very relevant word for Donegal.
Jessica Oyler: This summer, Jessica Oyler took an Irish language class through Oideas Gael. She spent a few days in Dublin and then traveled to Glencolmcille, Co. Donegal for the class. She loved how friendly everyone was--making such lovely friends who helped her feel comfortable speaking a language to which she’s rather new. Once back in the states, Jessica worked on an archeological dig site of a Puritan home in Massachusetts.
Cassidy Allen: For all of June, Cassidy participated in an intensive Irish language course in Carraroe, Ireland. She was able to visit some amazing places like the Aran Islands, Kylemore Abbey, and the Cliffs of Moher. Cassidy had a wonderful time eating delicious food like Murphy's ice cream, petting donkeys and cows, and of course, learning Irish!
Abigail Harris: Abigail completed a language immersion program at Oideas Gael – a Gaeltacht school in Gleann Cholm Cille, Co. Donegal. It was both challenging and rewarding, and she definitely plans to return next summer. She also visited the National Museum of Ireland to see the artifacts she had written about for a term paper on Pre-Christian worship sites & the Irish Church.”
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BC Graduate Students at Notre Dame Summer Seminar
This past summer Rachael Young and Tiffany Thompson attended the Notre Dame Irish Seminar in Dublin and Connemara where they spent two weeks discussing the legacy of 1922 with scholars and students from the US, UK, Ireland, and Europe. As part of the seminar they attended academic lectures at the Royal Irish Academy and Trinity College, Dublin and managed to fit in a few non-academic cultural activities like a trip to the Aran Islands and a night at the Abbey Theatre. They then spent the next couple of weeks as graduate students are want to do: digging into archives in Dublin, Belfast, and London by day and experiencing Irish and British pub culture by night.
Doctorate Awarded, Michael Bailey
Michaely Bailey defended his dissertation, The First Irish Diaspora in the Age of the Bourbon Reforms: Imperial Translation, Political Economy, and Slavery, on Friday, July 22 in Connolly House.
In his dissertation, Bailey highlights the role of Irish exiles as “imperial translators” in promoting the Spanish emulation of British imperial practices such as political economy and plantation slavery during Spain’s eighteenth-century Bourbon Reforms. In the fall, he starts as a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Boston College where he will teach early modern and modern history. He also hopes to expand on his dissertation with further research on the Irish diaspora in the Spanish Empire in preparation to publish his dissertation findings.
Comhfhios 2022 - Other Irelands
The 5th annual Comhfhios Graduate Conference took place on February 26, 2022. It included graduate student panels and round tables that spoke to the conference theme “Other Irelands.” The conference concluded with keynote speaker Dr. Sarah Townsend of the University of New Mexico English Department.
Comhfhios 2021 - Conflict & Resolution
Our graduate students were pleased to host the fourth annual Comhfhios conference. The year, students discussed the themes of conflict and resolution in Irish Studies. From military struggles to social quarrels, from centuries-old battles of modern-day dilemmas, the conference explored how Ireland experienced, resolved, and moved beyond troublesome conflicts.
Comhfhios 2020 - In Awe of all Mná
The third annual Comhfios conference, 'In Awe of All Mná,' discussed the role of women in Irish Studies: from history to social media, literature to politics, activism to academia. The conference focuses on the impact women have had on Ireland. Boston College alum, Leeann Lane (Dublin City University), delivered a keynote address.
Comhfhios 2019 - Anois (now)
The second annual Comhfios conference was held in February of 2019. The theme, 'Anois (now),' focused on helping graduate students navigate the field of Irish Studies. Consisting of various panels and roundtables, participants discussed how to navigate funding, work on job applications, and alt-ac careers.