My PhD thesis was on First World War British poetry. Since then I have worked on gender and war and more broadly on subjective experiences as they are represented in life-writings, especially examining war and grief and war and trauma. My teaching areas include modern British literature, women’s writing, and autobiography/life-writing and Communications in Mathematics and Computer Science.
I have recently completed a book on medical personnel and war trauma from the First World War to the War in Iraq, which is to be published by Manchester University Press (with Dr Jane Potter). I have also edited a Second World War Irish nurse’s diary which was published by Orion Press (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Both projects relate to my research interests in war and life-writing.
Continuing my interest in the subjective experience and the use of language to articulate emotion, I have recently begun working on exchanges of letters between couples during the First World War and have presented conference papers on this topic. I continue to focus my work on Ireland and personal experiences of the two world wars.