Conference Details > Committee

Heather Laird is a Lecturer in English at University College Cork. She is a postcolonial scholar whose research interests include theories and practices of resistance, Irish culture since the early nineteenth century, and commemoration. She is the author of Subversive Law in Ireland (2005) and Commemoration (2018). She is co-editor of Dwelling(s) in Ninteenth-Century Ireland (2023), and a series editor of Síreacht: Longings for Another Ireland (Cork University Press).

Hélène Lecossois is Professor of Irish Literary Studies at the University of Lille (France). The primary focus of her research is the relation of theatre to history. Her other research interests include modernism, twentieth-century Irish drama, postcolonial and performance studies. She is the author of Endgame de S. Beckett (2009) and Performance, Modernity and the Plays of J. M. Synge (2021). She is currently working on a decolonial history of Irish theatre.

Hope Noonan Stoner is a third-year doctoral student in the UCC Department of English and a recipient of Research Ireland’s Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship. She holds an Honours BA in English with minors in Spanish and History from Union College, a First-Class Honours MA degree in Irish Writing and Film from UCC and a First-Class Honours MA in Global Security and Borders from Queen’s University Belfast. Her doctoral research focuses on the diasporic, transnational, and postcolonial connections between modernist poets Lola Ridge and Julia de Burgos.

Oliver O'Hanlon received his PhD from University College Cork in 2024 for a thesis on the evolution of the French political perception of Ireland through the writing of several grand reporter journalists in the 20^th century. He is a regular contributor to the Irish Times’ Irishman’s Diary column on diverse subjects linked to Irish history.