I am an American Studies specialist with satellite interests in Transatlantic Literary Studies and, particularly, the Irish Atlantic. My third monograph, Ireland, Migration and Return Migration: The "Returned Yank" in the Cultural Imagination, 1952 to present was published by Liverpool UP in March 2019 and was awarded the Michael J. Durkan Prize for Books on Language and Culture by the American Conference for Irish Studies. My second book, the outcome of a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, was "Other People's Diasporas": Negotiating Race in Contemporary Irish and Irish-American Culture (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 2013). My first book, Passing into the Present: Contemporary American Fiction of Racial and Gender Passing, appeared wtih Manchester UP in 2010.

My current research project is titled For Export Only: Irish Writers and U.S. Magazines, 1940 to 1970. Comprising case studies of American magazines from the mid-twentieth century, the project aims to 1) dislodge “exile” and “emigration” as the dominant modes of framing Irish literary culture that is produced and/or circulated beyond the borders of the nation-state 2) significantly expand scholarship that challenges claims that mid-twentieth-century Irish literary culture was a cultural wasteland stymied by the Catholic church, censorship and a dearth of homegrown, sustainable publishing outlets.

From January 2019 to December 2022, I was co-editor-in-chief, with Nick Witham, of the Journal of American Studies (Cambridge UP).

My office is Queen's 314.

Biography:

I completed a B.A. in English and French (N.U.I., Galway, 2000), an M.A.in English (University College Cork, 2002) and a Ph.D. in American Studies (University of Nottingham, 2007). In 2007, I was awarded an Early Career Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust, which I undertook at the University of Nottingham. I was appointed to the University of Exeter as a Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature in 2010 and was promoted to full Professor in March 2023. 

Research supervision:

I would be happy to supervise Ph.D. dissertations in any of the following areas:

• Twentieth-and twenty-first century American literature
• African American and Ethnic American literature
• Contemporary American fiction, 1990s to present
• Contemporary Irish fiction, 1990s to present
• Race, Racial Passing, Whiteness Studies and the Black Atlantic
• Transnationalism and Diaspora
• Irish / American Transatlantic Culture