Denis Condon

My main research interests lie particularly in cinema, film and audiovisual culture, most often considering these from a historical perspective and exploring their intermediality or how approaches such as audience studies, the new cinema history or reception studies complicate received narratives. I have a particular interest in Irish cinema, both contemporary and historical. The relationship between music and image in screen media is an abiding concern, which I have most recently pursued in highlighting the careers of Irish women silent cinema musicians.

My first substantial research work was an MA major thesis on East German cinema (DCU, 2000). My PhD (NUIM, 2005) focused on cinema in Ireland up to the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1921. This work formed the basis of much of my subsequent research, most obviously my first book Early Irish Cinema, 1895-1921 (Irish Academic Press, 2008). It also led to my pursuit of Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2007-08) to study the interrelationships between the various kind of popular visual culture that made up the entertainment world of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Ireland.  This has included publication on such areas as popular theatre, tourism, and spectatorship.

My research on early Irish cinema continued through the period of the Irish Decade of Centenaries (2013-23), during which my publications included a research blog charting the rise of cinema as the new media of the Irish revolutionary period: https://earlyirishcinema.com/. I have found particular inspiration from scholars of Domitor: the international society for the study of early cinema and the HoMER (History of Moviegoing,, Exhibition and Reception) Network. I have had the privilege of supervising PhD students working on Irish actors in contemporary cinema, representations of motherhood in Irish and German cinema, and the novelist Teju Cole. 

I have very much enjoyed substantial research collaborations with a number of colleagues. As part of Sarah Culhane's postdoctoral project Irish Cinema Audiences(1950-60), we produced a collaborative website called Irish Cinema Histories: https://irishcinemahistories.maynoothuniversity.ie/. With Antonio Cascelli, I edited the 2021 collection Experiencing Music and Visual Culture: Threshold, Intermediality, Synchresis (2021). I warmly welcome further collaborations.