Ruth Gilligan
Project Summary
I am currently working towards my PhD in English/Creative Writing. For this I am writing a multi-stranded novel based around the history of Irish Jews. This required extensive research, both back home in Dublin and Cork, as well as over in Israel, and combines very disparate locations and time periods which yet interweave and resonate throughout.
Alongside this I am also writing an accompanying academic thesis entitled 'Towards a Narratology of Otherness' which examines the structural ingenuities employed by contemporary transcultural novelists. Beginning with Joyce's Ulysses as a model, I devise a prototype which is then applied to contemporary novelists such as David Mitchell, Junot Diaz and, particularly, Colum McCann - the latter whose entire canon consists of writing about communities traditionally classified as 'other', but who does so in formally interesting ways.
I have presented some of my research at the Exeter Humanities Graduate Conference, and have just been accepted to give a paper at the forthcoming American Conference for Irish Studies in June.
Supervisory Team
Dr. Sam North (primary supervisor). Dr. Sinéad Moynihan (secondary supervisor).
Wider Research Interests
Contemporary fiction; Irish fiction (past and present); Modernism; James Joyce; Samuel Beckett.
