I am from County Sligo, Ireland. I started my undergraduate degree at Trinity College Dublin studying human health and disease in the School of Medicine. I transferred to UNC at Chapel Hill in North Carolina my sophomore year where I discovered my passion for history and made the decision to pursue it academically. I graduated in 2024 with a BA in History and a Minor in Anthropology.
I have written about historical commemoration and memory as represented through murals from the Troubles in Northern Ireland. My senior honors thesis on the San Patricios, a group of mostly Irish defectors who deserted the American army during the Mexican-American War and joined the Mexican cause, allowed for larger exploration of the Irish diaspora, migrant identities as well as nativism and anti-Catholicism.
I am interested in commemoration memory, and transitional justice, particularly as it relates to ethnic and sectarian violence. I hope to explore how communities create ways of understanding their past to comprehend their contemporary space, as well as the intersections between historical understanding, current perspectives, and policy making. I hope to pursue these interests further in the dual degree program, and to explore the parallels between the Western Balkans and Northern Ireland in terms of contested histories, identity politics and reconciliation processes.
In my free time I like to read both fiction and nonfiction, play guitar, and see live music around the city.
