Current PhD Students

I am originally from County Armagh in Northern Ireland. My current research concerns the poet W.B. Yeats's lifelong interest in the art of sculpture. I examine his poetical and critical engagement with public monuments in Dublin, abstract sculpture, the coin designs of the Irish Free State, Celtic Revival statuary and lapis lazuli. To understand the relationship between modern poetry and sculpture my thesis necessarily crosses disciplines and periods, contributing to our understanding of the verbal and visual arts, Yeats Studies, and the intersecting fields of Victorian, Modernist and Irish Studies. I am an AHRC-funded doctoral student at the University of York and received my BA (Hons) and MA from Queen's University, Belfast. From 2016-2017 I worked as a Research assistant on the interdisciplinary project 'W.B. Yeats and the Writing of Art' in Trinity College, Dublin. Between York and Dublin I have co-organised a conference and symposium, taught seminars and workshops from Medieval to Modern literature, and co-curated an exhibition, 'Writing Art in Ireland, 1890-1930' (Sept. 2016-Jan. 2017), in the Book of Kells library, Dublin.