Heather Laird

I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, University College Cork. I was raised on a farm outside Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim and attended schools in Boyle, Co. Roscommon and Sligo town. I completed an IRC-funded doctoral thesis under the supervision of Declan Kiberd at University College Dublin and was the James and Mary Fox Postdoctoral Fellow with the Centre for Irish Studies at NUI Galway.

I am the author of Subversive Law in Ireland, 1879-1920 (2005) and Commemoration (2018), and editor of Daniel Corkery's Cultural Criticism: Selected Writings (2012). I am an Editor of Sireacht: Longings for Another Ireland, a series of short topical texts that explore the potential of ideas commonly dismissed as utopian. I have considerable experience of communicating her research outside the university, in the form of public lectures, interviews on local and national radio, RTÉ Brainstorm articles and television appearances. And I am currently External Examiner at Ulster University.

Research Interests
I am a postcolonial scholar whose research crosses disciplinary boundaries, especially between literature, history and law. My research interests include theories and practices of resistance, particularly as they relate to land usage; critical/radical historical frameworks; commemoration; connections between Ireland, India and Palestine; law and literature; the intersection between class and gender; and Irish culture since the early nineteenth century. While wide-ranging in scope, my research is characterised by its focus on socio-political and cultural structures that lie outside of and/or counter the imperial power politics and colonial capitalism that have helped produce our contemporary crisis-afflicted world. My critical perspective also informs my creative practice, including my published works of creative non-fiction.