Prof. Eugene McNulty
Based in Dublin since 2008, I am a graduate of the University of Kent (Canterbury), where I was awarded my MA and PhD degrees by the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Research. From 2003-2008 I was a member of the School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies at the University of Portsmouth. My work ranges across the fields of Irish Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and the Legal Humanities, and tends to concern the imbrication of the literary with its various political and social contexts. I am the author of The Ulster Literary Theatre and the Northern Revival (2008), and the coeditor of number of scholarly collections: Crime Cultures: Figuring Criminality in Fiction and Film (co-edited with Bran Nicol and Patricia Pulham, 2010); Patrick Pearse: Collected Plays (co-edited with Róisín Ní Ghairbhí, 2013); Hearing Heaney (co-edited Ciaran Mac Murchaidh, 2015); The Theatre of Marie Jones (co-edited Tom Maguire, 2015); Patrick Pearse and the Theatre (co-edited Róisín Ní Ghairbhí, 2016); Law and Literature: the Irish Case (co-edited Adam Hanna, 2022). My work has also been published in journals such as Journal of Postcolonial Writing; Irish University Review; Irish Studies Review; Law and literature; Religions.
In addition to my role in the School of English at DCU, I have been the Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (2016-20), and the Chair of the Irish Humanities Alliance (2019-20). I am currently the Co-Chair of the Irish Humanities Alliance's Working Group on the Legal Humanities (https://www.irishhumanities.ie/working-groups/legal-humanities), and the Co-Chair of the Irish Network for the Legal Humanities (https://lawandliteratureireland.wordpress.com/). I also sit on the Steering Committee for DCU's Ireland-India Institute (https://www.dcu.ie/ireland-india-institute), and am a member of the editorial board for the journal Studia Hibernica (https://www.studiahibernica.ie/)
Research Interests
My particular research interests tend to focus on Irish literature and theatre history, postcolonial writing, and the intersections between law and cultural production. My work in the legal humanities space - with its concern for the question of authority and its anxieties - has also led to a cognate research interest in the alignments between the literary and religious imaginaries. These interests are reflected in a number of ongoing projects: a book-length study of the connections between law and its anxieties in Irish writing; an edited collection focusing on the fascination of Irish writers with the figure of Antigone; and a special issue of the journal Religions concerning the crosscurrents between literature and religion across periods and spaces.
Teaching Interests
As well as being central to my research, the areas of theatre studies, Irish writing, postcolonial literatures, and the intersections of law and cultural production also form the core of my teaching activities - at undergraduate level as well as my work as a postgraduate supervisor and mentor.
