Scholarship
Research at the Edges of Law, Folklore, and the Archive
My research examines how systems of authority are constructed, interpreted, and transmitted through narrative traditions. Drawing on interdisciplinary training in law, folklore, and medieval literature, I investigate how narratives of justice and vernacular knowledge, particularly those surrounding the bean feasa (the wise woman) encode moral authority and social governance within Irish cultural tradition. I work closely with the archival materials preserved in the Schools' Collection of the National Folklore Collection and explore how folklore functions as a repository of cultural memory and community knowledge systems, preserving and reinterpreting concepts of justice and authority associated with early Irish legal traditions.
Current work examines the treatment of bodily difference and reproductive politics in the Brehon law corpus, the somatic encoding of famine memory in vernacular tradition, animacy and sacred tree belief in Irish folk tradition, and the structural erasure of anonymized voices from AI training data. Methodologically, I work across large-scale archival analysis, close textual reading, and critical theory.
Doctoral study begins in September 2027.
Research Interests
Landscape, place, and ecological thought in Irish cultural tradition · Early Irish law and legal culture, including concepts of environmental ethics, agency, and personhood · Vernacular knowledge systems and legal consciousness in Irish tradition · Archival folklore research, particularly the Schools' Collection of the Irish National Folklore Collection · Wise women (bean feasa) and gendered authority in Irish folk tradition · Cultural memory and the transmission of knowledge in Irish oral and archival sources · Narrative authority and legal hermeneutics in mythic, historical, and folkloric texts
Areas of Research Expertise
Early Irish Law (Brehon Law): Cáin Lánamna, Bretha Crólige, Bretha Comaithchesa, and the Senchas Már corpus; legal personhood, honor-price, and the regulation of marriage, injury, and bodily difference.
Irish Mythology and Place-Name Tradition: the Dindsenchas, the immrama, cosmological and more-than-human temporalities in medieval Irish narrative.
The Irish National Folklore Collection: large-scale archival methodology applied to the Schools' Collection (1937–1939), with particular attention to the bean feasa, botanical knowledge, and famine memory.
Feminist Legal Theory and Crip Theory: the medicalized female body, reproductive politics, and the legal construction of disability in medieval and contemporary frameworks.
Environmental and Plant Humanities: animacy, sacred tree belief, botanical encoding of trauma, island studies, and ecological imagination in Irish tradition.
Postcolonial and Digital Humanities: famine infrastructure and landscape memory, data centre resistance movements, archival anonymity and AI training data.
Languages
Intermediate reading knowledge: Old Irish · Old French · Old English · Middle English · Latin · German · Spanish · French
Conversational: Mandarin Chinese
Thesis Research
"'Goodness Villainy': Wise Women in the Schools' Collection." M.A. Thesis, University College Cork, 2024. First Class Honours.
The first large-scale archival analysis of the bean feasa across 930 entries in the Schools' Collection of the Irish National Folklore Commission. The project identified and categorized 296 named wise women and 144 descriptive terms, mapping patterns of gendered knowledge transmission and vernacular authority across Ireland's 26 counties. It examines the wise woman as a mediator of vernacular knowledge systems, healing traditions, and local moral authority within rural communities, while considering the interpretive implications of the Schools' Collection as a state-organized folklore archive mediated through student collectors and teacher transcription. The thesis has implications for feminist folklore methodology, the study of marginalized expertise, and the historiography of Irish vernacular knowledge.
"Alexios and Bohemond: Alliance, Rivalry, and Political Strategy in the First Crusade." M.Phil. Thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2012.
A comparative analysis of Byzantine, Latin, and Norman chronicles — including The Alexiad, Gesta Francorum, and Fulcher of Chartres — reconstructing key moments of cooperation and conflict between the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos and the Norman leader Bohemond of Taranto across the First Crusade. The project examines how political strategy, cultural difference, and rival historiographical traditions shaped the narrative of the Crusade and the enduring fracture between Latin Christendom and Byzantium.
"Corporate Communication and Freedom of Expression in the Age of Mass Surveillance." M.S. Thesis, Florida Institute of Technology, 2014. 4.0 GPA.
A qualitative media analysis of corporate communications issued by Twitter and Google in the post-Snowden era, examining how technology companies rhetorically positioned themselves as defenders of online freedom of expression and digital civil liberties. The project anticipated contemporary debates over platform governance, state surveillance, and the boundary between corporate speech and political advocacy.
Conference Presentations
2026
"The Unnamed and the Untrainable: Archival Anonymity, AI Training Data, and the Structural Erasure of Marginalized Voices." 3rd International Conference on Social Sciences Research in the Age of AI (SSRAAI2026), University of Aizu, Japan, July 2026 (forthcoming).
"Inventing St. Patrick's Day: Vernacular Tradition, American Consumer Culture, and the Making of an American Holiday." Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Summer Salon, June 2026 (forthcoming).
"The Honor-Price of a Werwolf." 39th Irish Conference of Medievalists, Dublin, May 2026 (forthcoming).
"Against the Attention Economy: Boredom, Embodiment, and the Lost Commons of Time." Negations and Interruptions as World-Building: Tactics of (e)Coresistance Against Capitalism for Human and More-Than-Human Flourishing, University College Dublin, May 2026 (forthcoming).
"Islands That Do Not Age: The Irish Otherworld Archipelago, Ecological Imagination, and More-Than-Human Temporality in the Immrama Tradition." Mythical Archipelagos: Islands, Narratives, and Imaginaries Across Cultures and Media, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, May 2026 (forthcoming).
"The Grammar of Animacy and Sacred Tree Belief in the Irish National Folklore Collection." 3rd International Conference on Global Plant Humanities: Botanical Life in Art, Science, and Imagination, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, May 2026 (forthcoming).
"Féar Gorta (Hungry Grass), Somatic Trauma, and the Botanical Encoding of Famine Memory in the Irish Folklore Tradition." (In-)Visible Wounds: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Discrimination and Violence, April 2026 (forthcoming).
"Roads to Nowhere: Famine Infrastructure, Landscape Scar, and the Unhomeliness of the Irish Midlands." Home, Homecoming, Homesickness: Online International Emerging Scholars' Conference, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, April 2026.
Earlier Presentations
"The Role of Emotions in Middle Irish Poetry: The Deserted Home." Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies Biennial Conference, University of Western Australia.
"Guardians, Not Gatekeepers: Building Inclusive Digital Communities to Advance Celtic Studies." Celtic Studies Association of North America Conference, 2022.
"Cath Maige Tuired: Justice and Kingship in Medieval Ireland." New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
"Fueling Injustice: Memory in the U.S. Justice System." Memory, Forgetting and Creating: 5th International Interdisciplinary Conference.
"Resuscitated, Revived, and Reanimated Narratives in Film and Television." International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts Annual Conference.
"Emerging Technology 101: Adapting to this Brave New World." Asian American Lawyers of New York Fall Conference.
"Fostering Cross-Cultural Cooperation." Tamkang World Forum for Youth Leaders.
"Textiquette: A Qualitative Study of Text Culture." Florida Communication Association Conference.
"Cultural Exchange Programs." Fourth Florida-Taiwan Higher Education Conference.
Selected Works in Progress
"Dead in the Law of Cohabitation: Sexual Disability, Reproductive Politics, and the Medicalized Female Body in Early Irish Law." A feminist crip-theory analysis of Bretha Crólige and Cáin Lánamna, examining how early Irish legal texts construct the non-reproductive, disabled, or ageing female body as a site of juridical anxiety.
"Is It Herself?: The Changeling, Bodily Authenticity, and the Surveillance of Deviant Female Bodies in Irish Folklore." An application of Butler and Foucault to the folkloric management of female embodiment across the Schools' Collection.
"Cosmology without Constellations: Place-Based Cosmology in Medieval Ireland." A reading of the Dindsenchas as cosmological archive: how medieval Irish cosmology was organized horizontally, through landscape, rather than vertically through the stars.
"Irish Data Centre Resistance and the Genealogy of Radical Land Politics." A postcolonial reading of contemporary Irish opposition to hyperscale data infrastructure, tracing its inheritance from nineteenth-century land agitation.
Teaching Experience
Adjunct Faculty, Florida Institute of Technology | 2011–2015, 2024–2025
Courses taught include: Civilization I (Ancient through Medieval); Civilization II (Renaissance through Modern); Ancient and Medieval Philosophy; Scientific and Technical Communication; Mass Communication Law and Ethics; British Literature; Composition and Rhetoric; Writing about Literature.
Education
M.A. in Irish Mythology and Folklore — University College Cork, Ireland, 2023
Juris Doctor — William & Mary Law School, Virginia, 2018
M.Phil. in Medieval Languages, Literature, and Culture — Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, 2011
M.S. in Global Strategic Communication — Florida Institute of Technology, 2014
B.A. in Humanities(summa cum laude) — Florida Institute of Technology, 2010
Invitations and Collaboration
I welcome inquiries from conference organizers, doctoral programs, editors of edited volumes and special issues, and scholars working in adjacent fields. I am especially interested in collaborations that bridge medieval and contemporary questions, law and literature, or archive and embodiment.