Queen's University Belfast

Graduate Student, Institute of Irish Studies

PhD Candidate

Thesis Title: Viewing Conflict: Museum visitor experiences of exhibitions of the conflict in and around Northern Ireland.

About

I am interested in how visitors experience museums, and how those experiences are influenced, either by the museums/exhibits they are viewing or by outside influence/past experiences. I am also interested in how "The Troubles" and other contested history are presented and displayed in museums in Northern Ireland.

I completed my BA in History at Saint Vincent College, Latrobe, Pennsylvania in 2006, my MA in European History at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2009 and began my PhD in Irish Studies at Queen's University of Belfast, September, 2009.  My current research, while reliant on history for context, has moved from historical methods to a more anthropological/ethnographic approach. For my PhD research I am conducting surveys and interviews of visitors to the Ulster Museum, the Linenhall Library's exhibit 'Troubled Images', the Museum of Free Derry and the Tower Museum in Derry.

I worked in 2007 as a Museum Program Assistant in the On-Site Education Department, Jamestown Living History Museum, for the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Inc. Jamestown, Virginia. The Foundation is an agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia.