Scholarship
Research at the intersection of law, folklore, and the archive
I work on early medieval and modern Ireland — specifically, on how vernacular knowledge systems, legal traditions, and folk narrative co-produce authority, memory, and personhood. My research draws on the Brehon law corpus, the Schools' Collection of the Irish National Folklore Collection, and the literary tradition of medieval Irish mythology, brought into conversation with feminist and crip theory, plant humanities, and critical archive studies. Methodologically, I move between large-scale archival analysis, close textual reading, and contemporary critical theory.
Doctoral study begins September 2027.
[Download CV (PDF) →] [Download M.A. thesis (PDF) →] [Contact →]
Research Threads
My current and developing work clusters around four interrelated threads.
Vernacular knowledge and the bean feasa tradition. The wise woman as mediator of folk medicine, moral authority, and community knowledge; the Schools' Collection as both archive and artifact; the historiography of marginalized expertise. Representative work: M.A. thesis; "She Was Here as Long as Anybody Remembered" (Latvia, July 2026); "Is It Herself?: The Changeling, Bodily Authenticity, and the Surveillance of Deviant Female Bodies in Irish Folklore" (in progress).
Brehon law, personhood, and the body. The legal construction of bodily difference, gender, reproduction, and monstrosity in early Irish law; the literary imagination of legal categories; honor-price as a window into medieval Irish personhood. Representative work: "The Honor-Price of a Werwolf" (Irish Conference of Medievalists, May 2026); "Dead in the Law of Cohabitation: Sexual Disability, Reproductive Politics, and the Medicalized Female Body in Early Irish Law" (in progress); "Cath Maige Tuired: Justice and Kingship in Medieval Ireland."
Landscape, memory, and ecological imagination. Famine memory and landscape scar; sacred trees, hungry grass, and the grammar of animacy; the Otherworld archipelago and the wilderness imagination; cosmology organized horizontally through place rather than vertically through the stars. Representative work: "Roads to Nowhere"; "Féar Gorta"; "The Grammar of Animacy and Sacred Tree Belief"; "Islands That Do Not Age"; "Díseart"; "Cosmology without Constellations" (in progress).
Archive, algorithm, and the politics of cultural memory. The structural erasure of anonymous and marginalized voices in folk archives and AI training data; the National Folklore Collection in the age of algorithmic culture; contemporary Irish data centre resistance read through the inheritance of nineteenth-century land politics. Representative work: "The Unnamed and the Untrainable" (University of Aizu, July 2026); "From Archive to Algorithm" (under review); "Irish Data Centre Resistance and the Genealogy of Radical Land Politics" (in progress).
Areas of 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 across 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.
M.A. Thesis
"'Goodness Villainy': Wise Women in the Schools' Collection." 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 Collection. The project identified and categorized 296 named wise women and 144 descriptive terms, mapping patterns of gendered knowledge transmission and vernacular authority across all 26 counties of Ireland. The thesis examines the wise woman as mediator of vernacular knowledge systems, healing traditions, and local moral authority within rural communities, while interrogating the interpretive implications of the Schools' Collection as a state-organized folklore archive mediated through student collectors and teacher transcription. Implications extend to feminist folklore methodology, the study of marginalized expertise, and the historiography of Irish vernacular knowledge.
[Download thesis (PDF) →] [Read abstract →]
Earlier Theses
"Alexios and Bohemond: Alliance, Rivalry, and Political Strategy in the First Crusade." M.Phil. Thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2011. 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.
"Corporate Communication and Freedom of Expression in the Age of Mass Surveillance." M.S. Thesis, Florida Institute of Technology, 2014. 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. The project anticipated contemporary debates over platform governance, state surveillance, and the boundary between corporate speech and political advocacy.
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. Submitted to The Politics of Ableism: Gender, Sexuality, and Disability in Literature and Media.
"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. Forthcoming submission to Journal for the Study of Radicalism.
"Involuntary Spontaneity: Somatic Trauma, Bodily Memory, and the Limits of Kantian Subjectivity."Submitted to Open Philosophy Journal*.*
"Silence Speaks Korean: Linguistic Hierarchy, Cultural Authority, and the Politics of English in BTS's ARIRANG."Submitted to Babel/s in the Twenty-First Century.
Conference Presentations
2026 — Forthcoming
"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.
"'She Was Here as Long as Anybody Remembered': The Bean Feasa as Keeper of Time, Carrier of Debt, and Archive of the Living Dead." Time Work: Debt, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Practice, Latvia, July 2026.
"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.
"Díseart: Sacred Desolation, Desert Theology, and the Irish Wilderness Imagination." Imaginative Landscapes and Otherworlds 2026: The Alterity of Deserts and Arid Environments, June 2026.
"The Honor-Price of a Werwolf." 39th Irish Conference of Medievalists, Dublin, May 2026.
"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.
"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.
"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.
2026 — Presented
"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.
"Roads to Nowhere: Famine Infrastructure, Landscape Scar, and the Unhomeliness of the Irish Midlands." Home, Homecoming, Homesickness: 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.
Teaching
Adjunct Faculty, Florida Institute of Technology. 2011–2015, 2024–2025.
Courses taught: 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.
Languages
Reading knowledge. Old Irish · Old French · Old English · Middle English · Latin · German · Spanish · French.
Conversational. Mandarin Chinese.
Education
M.A., Irish Mythology and Folklore University College Cork (Ireland), 2024. First Class Honours.
J.D. William & Mary School of Law (Virginia), 2018.
M.S., Global Strategic Communication Florida Institute of Technology, 2014.
M.Phil., Medieval Languages, Literature, and Culture Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), 2011.
B.A., Humanities(summa cum laude) Florida Institute of Technology, 2010.
Collaboration and Inquiries
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.
[Contact →]