Dr. Fiona Fearon

I am a Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland, with extensive experience of teaching both practical and theoretical drama and theatre modules. I was a founding member of the Humanities Department at DkIT, and have developed over fifteen programmes since 1996, including the BA Cultural Studies, BA (Hons) Cultural Resource Management, BA Performing Arts, BA Theatre and Film Practice, BA (Hons) Arts and BA (Hons) Drama and Performance.  I have supervised over ten taught MA dissertations and I am currently supervising two research postgraduate students.

PhD. , 'The Selection, Production and Reception of European Plays at the National Theatre of Great Britain, 1963-1997',  University of Sheffield , July 2007
M.A. (Hons) Modern Drama Studies, UCD, 1993    
BA (Hons) Drama, (Directing/Acting Major), U.C.W. Aberystwyth, 1989                                 
Foundation Art (Specialising in Theatre Design), Wimbledon School of Art,1985

My principal areas of interest are audience and performance studies, and I have published on audience ethnography and the performance of grief in contemporary society. Recently I have been working on Irish Theatre and grief in early twentieth century Ireland and working class performance culture in County Louth from Home Rule to the Free State. In 2017 I published ‘Playing the Rebel: Propaganda and Amateur Dramatics in County Louth, 1902-1916’ in Donal Hall and Martin Maguire’s County Louth and the Irish Revolution (Irish Academic Press, 2017).  I have subsequently produced a number of conference papers and public talks on this time period in County Louth, and I am working towards a forthcoming monograph, Dundalk in Revolution: Cultural Life in Dundalk 1898-1923.  In 2019 and 2020 I was invited to give two public lectures on my work as part of Louth Festival of History/Decade of Centenaries programme.  In 2022 I published a chapter, ‘Speaking from Beyond the Grave: The Voices of the Dead in Contemporary Irish Drama’, in a monograph from Cambridge Scholars, The Graveyard in Literature: Liminality and Social Critique.

I am a former member of the executive committee of the Irish Society for Theatre Research, and convener of the ISTR New Scholar’s Prize 2012 and 2013. I am currently convenor of the Annual Dorothy Macardle Humanities Lecture at DkIT.

Book Chapters |
2022, Forthcoming: ‘Twentieth Century Literature and Drama in Co. Louth’; Chapter, Louth: history and society. Interdisciplinary essays on the history of an Irish county, Geography Publications
2022, ‘Speaking from Beyond the Grave: The Voices of the Dead in Contemporary Irish Drama’; The Graveyard in Literature: Liminality and Social Critique, Cambridge Scholars.
2017, ‘‘Playing the Rebel’: Propaganda and Amateur Dramatics in County Louth, 1902–1916’; County Louth and the Irish Revolution, 1912-1923, edited by Martin Maguire and Donal Hall, Irish Academic Press.
2012, ‘The Performance of Grief in Contemporary Ireland’; Changes in Contemporary Ireland, edited by Catherine Rees, Loughborough University Press.
2010, ‘Decoding the Audience: Chatroom September 2008’; Staging Thought: Essays on Irish Theatre, Practice and Scholarship, Pater Lang. Edited by Rhona Trench and Christabel Scaife.

Periodicals 
2019, ‘Recovering Irish Writing on the Margins’, Review A History of Working Class Writing; Saothar, Journal of the Irish Labour History Society.
2010, ‘Decoding the Audience: The real Audience and their creation of meaning’; About Performance, ‘Audiencing: The Work of the Spectator in Live Performance’, ed. By Gay McAuley, Department of Performance, University of Sydney.

Public Lectures 
September, 2020, ‘Movies, Musicals and Plays in Dundalk 1919-1923’ ; Invited Public Audio Lecture, Louth Festival of History, Co. Louth
November 2019, ‘Theatre, Play and Culture in Dundalk 1900-1923’ ; Invited Public Lecture, County Louth Archaeological and Historical Society, Dundalk
September 2019, ‘Popular Culture and the Revolution in North County Louth, 1900-1923’ ; Invited Public Lecture, Drogheda Library, Louth Festival of History, Co. Louth

Conference Papers 
May 2022, ‘The Dundalk Maytime Festival (1965-2006) – Citizenship as Performance’ ; ISTR Annual Conference, Magee, University of Ulster (Panel Chair)
April, 2022, ‘The Power of Silent - Liminality and Social Critique in Contemporary Irish Theatre’ ; Conference Paper, “Liminality and Social Critique’, Department of Humanities, DkIT 
July, 2021, ‘Culture on the Border: Theatre and the Arts in Dundalk 1918-2020’ ;  IASIL, International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures Conference, ‘Creative Borders’, University of Lodz, Poland (online) (Panel Chair)
May, 2021, ‘Reflections on an Online Year of Performance – the Simple, Mass and Socially Distanced Audience’; ISTR Annual Conference, ‘Hard Graft: Performance, Labour and Value’, Queen’s University Belfast (online)
April, 2021, ‘Reflections on an Online Year of Performance – the Simple, Mass and Socially Distanced Audience’ ; “Society and the Arts in the Pandemic”: Virtual Symposium, Department of Humanities, DkIT (online) (Panel Chair Roundtable discussion with theatre practitioners) 
July 2019, ‘A Hidden History: Working Class Culture in Dundalk 1898-1905’ ; IASIL, International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures Conference, Trinity College, Dublin
May 2019, ‘Negotiating Representations of Toxic Masculinity on the Abbey stage in 2018’ ; Irish Society for Theatre Research, ISTR Annual Conference, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick
April 2019, ‘Negotiating Representations of Toxic Masculinity on the Abbey stage in 2018’  ; Masculinities Seminar, DkIT
2018 ‘Louth in Revolution: Regional Impressions of the Irish Revival 1902-1923’ ; Irish Society for Theatre Research, ISTR Annual Conference, University of Lincoln