Prof Moynagh Sullivan
Associate Dean of Equality, Diversion and Inclusion
Professor
Biography
I am a Professor of English, with specialties in Gender, Intersectionality, Motherhood, and Irish Studies.
I was Visiting Fellow in Irish Studies at the Centre for Irish Studies/Moore Institute at NUIG, in Spring 2022, and in the autumn semester of 2021, I was Visiting Professor In Irish Studies at the Centre for Irish Studies at Boston College, both leading global centres for Irish Studies.
I am also Associate Dean for Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Interculturalism, Faculty of Arts, Celtic Studies and Philosophy. I share this role with my colleague, Dr Catherine Gander; we submitted a pioneering co-application for the position of Associate Dean to create possibilities and models for a gender-responsive and flexible method of collaborative leadership. In my role as EDI Associate Dean, I am also the co-chair of the Faculty Self-Assessment Team (SAT) for the Athena SWAN Bronze Award application and am the first chair of the Implementation Group for the FACSP Gender Equality Action Plan.
A long-standing and deep commitment to equality, inclusion, and diversity has been a core value of my work in research, teaching, and service. My work has focused on diversifying culture by examining cultural gender gaps, ableism, and by mapping the overlooked and unseen maternal imaginaries -- or, in other words, the shapes and practices of motherhood and care so often unnamed, as well as under- or unpaid, in culture and society. I have examined intersections of these areas in the fields of Irish writing, as well as contemporary poetry, fiction, art, and popular culture more broadly, and I have published extensively in these areas. These diverse practices are linked in my work by my consistent engagement with intersectionality, social and environmental justice, and the psychoanalytic approach I take. This critical lens is eclectic, drawing on Attachment Theory, Object Relations, Anglo-American feminism as well as French feminist and Jungian psychoanalytical approaches.
The psychoanalytical lens allows for experiential and affective topologies to be linked to wider cultural practices. Recent research in trauma studies, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology have refreshed this practice, especially in the area of Polyvagal theory, and this combined with ecofeminism and queer ecology, as well as indigenous and feminist economic models of rematriation and gift economies, can help create responsive critical paradigms for understanding and integrating the innovative work of artist/activists seeking a sustainable future in which issues of social justice can be meaningfully addressed. I see this as part of the wider scholarly search for new modes of critical engagement to respond to the innovative ways in which artists and writers cross genre boundaries and merge modalities to create the interventions needed for the urgent crises that the planet currently faces.
Inclusion, diversity, and equality have also been driving principles in my teaching practice. In my work in Japan, at UCD, and at MU, I have created accessible, enabling, supportive, and motivating learning environments, a commitment recognized in a USI and National Forum National Teaching Hero Award 2021, and in my selection as an Advance HE Innovative Assessment Torch Bearer.
The service roles I have pursued that include Associate Dean for Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Interculturalism, MAP Officer, and Co-Chair of FACSP Athena Swan Committee reflect my dedication to equality across all sectors of university life.
I have supervised PhDs on motherhood and reproductive politics, gender, aging, class and sexuality in fiction, drama, art, and poetry, performance art, and I welcome Ph.D. proposals in these and any of the other areas listed in my research fields. As a former Fulbright Scholar in Irish Studies at UC Berekely (2009), I have served as a Fulbright mentor and am currently a mentor on the Horizon 2020-funded Mothernet project, as well as in the faculty of Arts, Celtic Studies and Philosophy, and I welcome applications from post-doctoral fellows.
I am currently PI on the IRC-funded project Mamecology, in which I partner with the Irish Cancer Society (ICS). Mamecology is a curated virtual exhibition of artistic responses to breast cancer by both established artists and writers and by those who have turned to creative practices when faced with a diagnosis. Including writing, visual art practices, music, and performance, and it gathers expressions of the inner life of patients and loved ones, and provides a rich resource to assist with 'living well with, and through, cancer' (ICS). I am a former director of two MU Arts and Humanities research clusters (2011- 2015), a founding member of MU's Motherhood Project, which has successfully attracted funding from MU's Arts and Humanities Institute (AHI), and a member of Mothernet, a Horizon 2020 Twinning Project between MU, Vilnius University, Lithuania and Uppsala University, Sweden.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/moynaghsullivan/
https://mamecology.ie/
@MoynaghSulliva
@mamecologyart
@Mother_Cultures
@mother_net
I was Visiting Fellow in Irish Studies at the Centre for Irish Studies/Moore Institute at NUIG, in Spring 2022, and in the autumn semester of 2021, I was Visiting Professor In Irish Studies at the Centre for Irish Studies at Boston College, both leading global centres for Irish Studies.
I am also Associate Dean for Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Interculturalism, Faculty of Arts, Celtic Studies and Philosophy. I share this role with my colleague, Dr Catherine Gander; we submitted a pioneering co-application for the position of Associate Dean to create possibilities and models for a gender-responsive and flexible method of collaborative leadership. In my role as EDI Associate Dean, I am also the co-chair of the Faculty Self-Assessment Team (SAT) for the Athena SWAN Bronze Award application and am the first chair of the Implementation Group for the FACSP Gender Equality Action Plan.
A long-standing and deep commitment to equality, inclusion, and diversity has been a core value of my work in research, teaching, and service. My work has focused on diversifying culture by examining cultural gender gaps, ableism, and by mapping the overlooked and unseen maternal imaginaries -- or, in other words, the shapes and practices of motherhood and care so often unnamed, as well as under- or unpaid, in culture and society. I have examined intersections of these areas in the fields of Irish writing, as well as contemporary poetry, fiction, art, and popular culture more broadly, and I have published extensively in these areas. These diverse practices are linked in my work by my consistent engagement with intersectionality, social and environmental justice, and the psychoanalytic approach I take. This critical lens is eclectic, drawing on Attachment Theory, Object Relations, Anglo-American feminism as well as French feminist and Jungian psychoanalytical approaches.
The psychoanalytical lens allows for experiential and affective topologies to be linked to wider cultural practices. Recent research in trauma studies, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology have refreshed this practice, especially in the area of Polyvagal theory, and this combined with ecofeminism and queer ecology, as well as indigenous and feminist economic models of rematriation and gift economies, can help create responsive critical paradigms for understanding and integrating the innovative work of artist/activists seeking a sustainable future in which issues of social justice can be meaningfully addressed. I see this as part of the wider scholarly search for new modes of critical engagement to respond to the innovative ways in which artists and writers cross genre boundaries and merge modalities to create the interventions needed for the urgent crises that the planet currently faces.
Inclusion, diversity, and equality have also been driving principles in my teaching practice. In my work in Japan, at UCD, and at MU, I have created accessible, enabling, supportive, and motivating learning environments, a commitment recognized in a USI and National Forum National Teaching Hero Award 2021, and in my selection as an Advance HE Innovative Assessment Torch Bearer.
The service roles I have pursued that include Associate Dean for Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Interculturalism, MAP Officer, and Co-Chair of FACSP Athena Swan Committee reflect my dedication to equality across all sectors of university life.
I have supervised PhDs on motherhood and reproductive politics, gender, aging, class and sexuality in fiction, drama, art, and poetry, performance art, and I welcome Ph.D. proposals in these and any of the other areas listed in my research fields. As a former Fulbright Scholar in Irish Studies at UC Berekely (2009), I have served as a Fulbright mentor and am currently a mentor on the Horizon 2020-funded Mothernet project, as well as in the faculty of Arts, Celtic Studies and Philosophy, and I welcome applications from post-doctoral fellows.
I am currently PI on the IRC-funded project Mamecology, in which I partner with the Irish Cancer Society (ICS). Mamecology is a curated virtual exhibition of artistic responses to breast cancer by both established artists and writers and by those who have turned to creative practices when faced with a diagnosis. Including writing, visual art practices, music, and performance, and it gathers expressions of the inner life of patients and loved ones, and provides a rich resource to assist with 'living well with, and through, cancer' (ICS). I am a former director of two MU Arts and Humanities research clusters (2011- 2015), a founding member of MU's Motherhood Project, which has successfully attracted funding from MU's Arts and Humanities Institute (AHI), and a member of Mothernet, a Horizon 2020 Twinning Project between MU, Vilnius University, Lithuania and Uppsala University, Sweden.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/moynaghsullivan/
https://mamecology.ie/
@MoynaghSulliva
@mamecologyart
@Mother_Cultures
@mother_net
Book Chapter
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2022 | Moynagh Sullivan (2022) 'The Law of the Mother and the Sibling World: Leeanne Quinn’s Queer Ecologies' In: Gender in Irish Literature and Culture. Cork : UCC Press. | |
2021 | Moynagh Sullivan (2021) 'Rematriating Mid-century Modernism: Carla Lanyon Lanyon' In: Cambridge History of Irish Women's Poetry. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. | |
2016 | Moynagh Sullivan (2016) ''An Ear to the Earth: Matrixial Gazing in Tim Robinson's Walk-Art-Text Practice'' In: Unfolding Irish Landscapes: Tim Robinson,in Culture and Environment. Manchester : Manchester University Press. | |
2016 | Moynagh Sullivan (2016) ''“Scatter-Eyed /And Daunted”: The “Matrixial Gaze” in Seeing Things'' In: The Soul Exceeds Its Circumstances: The Later Poetry of Seamus Heaney. Indiana : Notre Dame University Press. [Link] [DOI] | |
2013 | Moynagh Sullivan (2013) ''Watch Your Language: Speculative Theory and the Poetry of Rita Ann Higgins'' In: Theory on the Edge: Irish Studies and the Politics of Sexual Difference. BASINGSTOKE : PALGRAVE. | |
2011 | Moynagh Sullivan (2011) ''No Undue Details: Love, Sex and Embodiment in the Poetry of Pearse Hutchinson'' In: Reading Pearse Hutchinson: From Findrum to Finestra. Dublin : Irish Academic Press. [Full-Text] | |
2008 | Moynagh Sullivan (2008) ''Gender, Sexuality and Irish Studies: Foreword'' In: Essays in Irish Literary Criticism: Themes of Gender, Sexuality, and Corporeality. New York; Wales : Mellon press. | |
2008 | Moynagh Sullivan (2008) ''In Search of Male Poets'' In: Irish Poetry after Feminism. Oxford : Colin Smythe. [Full-Text] | |
2008 | Moynagh Sullivan (2008) ''Raising the Veil: Mystery, Myth, and Melancholia in Irish Studies'' In: Irish Literature: Feminist Perspectives. Dublin : Carysfort Press. [Full-Text] | |
2007 | Moynagh Sullivan (2007) '‘Boyz to Men: Irish Boy Bands and Mothering the Nation’' In: Wanda Balzano, Anne Mulhall and Moynagh Sullivan(Eds.). Irish Postmodernisms and Popular Culture. Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan. [Full-Text] | |
2007 | Moynagh Sullivan and Borbala Farago (2007) ''Facing the Other: Introduction’' In: Borbala Farago and Moynagh Sullivan(Eds.). Facing the Other: Interdisciplinary Studies in Race, Gender and Social Justice. : Cambridge Scholar’s Press. | |
2007 | Moynagh Sullivan, Wanda Balzano, Anne Mulhall (2007) ''Aporias'' In: Irish Postmodernists and Popular Culture. Basingstoke : Palgrave McMillan. [DOI] | |
2000 | Moynagh Sullivan (2000) 'Feminism, Postmodernism and the Subjects of Irish and Women’s Studies’' In: P.J. Mathews(Eds.). New Voices in Irish Criticism. Dublin : Four Courts Press. | |
1999 | Moynagh Sullivan (1999) 'Irish Mid-Century Writers: Máire Bradshaw, Ita Daly, Nicolette Devas, Polly Devlin, Dervla Murphy, K. Arnold Price, Moira O’Neill, Blanaid Salkeld, and Elizabeth Shane' In: The Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. [Link] |
Edited Book
Peer Reviewed Journal
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2017 | Moynagh Sullivan, Abby Palko, Sinead Kennedy (2017) ''Introduction to Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectionality in Irish Studies''. BREAC: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies, . [Link] [Full-Text] | |
2013 | Moynagh Sullivan (2013) ''A Quare Pair: Feminist and Queer Ecologies in Irish Cultural Studies''. Irish University Review, 43 (1):41-48. | |
2012 | Moynagh Sullivan (2012) ''An Unthought Known of Her Own: The Aesthetics of Interruption''. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 13 (2):106-111. [Link] [DOI] | |
2012 | Moynagh Sullivan (2012) ''The Woman Gardener: Transnationalism, Gender, Sexuality, and the Poetry of Blanaid Salkeld''. Irish University Review, 42 (1):53-71. [Link] [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
2011 | Moynagh Sullivan (2011) ''Looking at Being Somebody: Class and Gender in the Poetry of Rita Ann Higgins''. Irish University Review, 41 (2):112-133. [Link] [Full-Text] | |
2009 | Moynagh Sullivan (2009) ''On Her Second Birthday: Medbh McGuckian''. Irish University Review, 39 :320-332. [Link] [Full-Text] | |
2007 | Moynagh Sullivan, Wanda Balzano (2007) '‘The Ballroom of Critical Romance’'. The Irish Review, :1-8. [Full-Text] | |
2006 | Moynagh Sullivan (2006) ''Boyz to Men: Irish Boy Bands and the Alternative Nation''. The Irish Review, 3 (34):58-73. [Link] [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
2005 | Moynagh Sullivan (2005) 'The Treachery of Wetness: Seamus Heaney, Irish Studies, and the Politics of Parturition'. Irish Studies Review, 13 :451-468. [Full-Text] | |
2004 | Moynagh Sullivan (2004) ''The In-formal Poetics of Medbh McGuckian''. Nordic Irish Studies, 3 (1):75-92. [Link] [Full-Text] | |
2003 | Moynagh Sullivan (2003) ''I am Not Yet Delivered of the Past: The Poetry of Blanaid Salkeld''. Irish University Review, 33 (1):182-200. [Link] [Full-Text] | |
2002 | Moynagh Sullivan (2002) ''I Am, Therefore I'm Not (Woman): Eavan Boland, Ireland and Poetry''. International Journal of English Studies, 2 (2):123-134. [Full-Text] | |
2000 | Moynagh Sullivan (2000) ''Joking with the Critically Serious: McGuckians Comic Oeuvre''. The Journal of Irish Studies, 15 :6-13. [Link] [Full-Text] |
Edited Journal Issue
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2007 | Moynagh Sullivan, Wanda Balzano (2007) Special Issue: 'Irish Feminisms'. EJRNL [Link] |
Invited Lectures
Conference Contribution
Book Review
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2013 | Moynagh Sullivan (2013) Poetry by Women in Ireland: A Critical Anthology 1870-1970. EDINBURGH: BREV | |
1999 | Moynagh Sullivan (1999) Shelmalier by Medbh McGuckian. Edinburgh: BREV [Link] | |
2013 | Moynagh Sullivan (2013) The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women's Poetry. EDINBURGH: BREV |
Encyclopedia Entry
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2013 | Moynagh Sullivan (2013) The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland: ‘Irish Boy Bands’. Dublin: ENC [Link] |
Invited Seminars
Invited papers
Magazine Article
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2001 | Moynagh Sullivan (2001) 'On Union and Other Metaphors'. Belfast: MA [Full-Text] |
Media
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2014 | Moynagh Sullivan (2014) TEDx: Creativity and Play as Social Transformers in Emma Donoghue’s Room. MEDIA [Link] | |
2014 | Moynagh Sullivan, Jody Allen Randolph (2014) 'Eavan Boland- A Poet's Dublin', Arena RTE Radio 1. Dublin: MEDIA [Link] | |
2012 | Moynagh Sullivan. Declan Kiberd (2012) 'Meave Binchy: A Celebration’. Dublin: MEDIA [Link] | |
2011 | Moynagh Sullivan (2011) 'Sinead Morrissey and Eastern Culture'. Dublin: MEDIA | |
2009 | Moynagh Sullivan (2009) ‘Language and Grammar’ Dave Fanning Show. Dublin: MEDIA | |
2007 | Moynagh Sullivan (2007) 'Chicklit', Ryan Tubridy Radio Show. Dublin: MEDIA | |
1998 | Moynagh Sullivan (1998) 'Eavan Boland: A Study' Public Broadcasting Documentary. Dublin: MEDIA |
Guest Editor
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2017 | Moynagh Sullivan, Abby Palko, Sinead Kennedy (2017) Special Issue: Gender, Sexuality and Intersectionality in Irish Studies. GUESTE [Link] |
Poetry
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2012 | Moynagh Sullivan (MU English Department), Joe Woods (Poetry ireland), Trish Groves (Trocaire) (2012) Poetry Reading and Educational Outreach. POEM [Link] | |
2010 | Moynagh Sullivan (2010) Recorded Public Interview Interview with Sinead Morrisey at Carton House. POEM |
Certain data included herein are derived from the © Web of Science (2023) of Clarivate. All rights reserved.
Teaching Interests
Literary and Cultural Theory: Intersectionality; Gender and Feminist Theory; Disability Studies; Eco- Criticism; Graphic Fiction: Contemporary Poetry; Contemporary Fiction; Popular Culture