Dr Aoileann Ni Eigeartaigh

Research & Interests

My research and publications span a wide range of literary and cultural contexts. I am interested in all the ways in which literature and the arts in general interact with society: reflecting social change, resisting hegemonic attitudes, encouraging historical revisions and creating liminal spaces within which new and inclusive perspectives can be developed. I find that regardless of the specific focus of my research, it always centers on the contribution literature can make to society. Recent publications include:

• Collaboration, Exchange and Transformation in Literary and Cultural Practices: Intercultural Conversations. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2026.
• “The Mermaid and Contested Narratives of Motherhood in the Poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Doireann Ní Ghríofa”, in An Ever-shifting Kaleidoscope: The Representation of the Irish Mammy in Contemporary Literature at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century, Armie Madalina and Maria Veronica Membrive Perez, eds.  De Gruyter, 2026.
• “‘I can look for my story among the witches of Salem, but it isn’t there’: Intercultural Conversation and the Reclamation of the Black Female Vice in Maryse Conde’s I, Tituba (1986)”, in Collaboration, Exchange and Transformation in Literary and Cultural Practices: Intercultural Conversations, ed. Aoileann Ní Éigeartaigh. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2026.
• “Irish Language Rap, Strategic Liminality and Multi-Accented Narratives of Identity”, in The Language of Music: Minority Languages in Popular Music, ed. Gareth Schott. Routledge, 2025.
• “The Mermaid as Abject: Ambiguity as Resistance in Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘The Little Sea Maid’ (1837) and Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s Nine Silences (2018)”, in Alexander, Laura, ed. Fairy Tales and Social Critique in Adaptations by Women Writers. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2025.
• “Literary Activism in Oirghialla from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century: poets and scribes”, in Nolan, William, ed. LOUTH: History and Society. Dublin: Geography Publications, 2023.
• “‘The Tahiti of the Northern Hemisphere’: Countertransference as Impediment to Transculturalism in Audrey Magee’s The Colony (2022)” in Transculturale, vol. 4.4 (2023), 51-63.
• “Listen: Still, the Echo of Loss”: Choctaw and Irish Transcultural Engagement in the Poetry of LeAnne Howe and Doireann Ní Ghríofa”, in Transculturale, vol. 3.2 (2023), 59-74.
• “Not everything buried is actually dead”: The Detective as Historian in Louise Penny’s Bury Your Dead (2010), in Clues , vol. 41, no. 2 (2023), pp. 43-52.