Participants #DW 2022

Sahar Ahmed is originally from Lahore, Pakistan and has a PhD in Law from Trinity College Dublin, on the right to freedom of religion within the international human rights legal system and Islamic jurisprudence. Sahar graduated from the University of London in 2010 with an LL.B (Hons) degree and completed her LLM with a focus on human rights law, from SOAS, University of London. She is a member of the Bar of England and Wales and a barrister member of the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn and practiced as a commercial and corporate barrister in Lahore for a number of years before moving to Ireland. Since then, Sahar has been actively involved in conversations regarding race and religion and their place within higher education in Ireland.

She is a Professor of United States and Atlantic Studies and Personal Chair in English Literature, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Author of over 20 monographs, essay collections, special issues, and scholarly editions and over 35 essays and book chapters and curator of over 6 US and UK travelling exhibitions. Her single-authored books include: African American Visual Arts, Characters of Blood, Suffering and Sunset, Stick to the Skin, If I Survive, Living Parchments, Battleground, The Anna Murray and Frederick Douglass Family Papers and Douglass Family Lives. Winner of a British Association for American Studies Book Prize and co-winner of a European Association for American Studies Book Prize and International African American History and Genealogical Society Maryland Book Award, she has delivered over 250 guest lectures and plenaries and held visiting appointments and fellowships at Memphis, Harvard, Yale, Oxford, King’s College London, University of California, Santa Barbara, the National Center for the Humanities in Durham, North Carolina, and the Obama Institute in Mainz, Germany. Previously Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of American Studies published by Cambridge University Press, Bernier is the recipient of a UK Philip Leverhulme Prize and Major Research Leverhulme Fellowship, AHRC Research and Leadership Fellowships, and Terra Foundation for American Art Program and Publication Grants. In 2018, she was awarded a Citation by Lt. Governor Boyd Rutherford of Maryland “as an internationally respected scholar, author and world renowned historian of African American Studies.” She is currently working on a three year international interdisciplinary research project funded by the UK Leverhulme Trust titled, Sacrifice is Survival: Black Families Fighting for Freedom in the USA and Canada (1732-1936).

Aisha Bolaji is co-founder and head of the visual arts team at The GALPAL Collective, an arts and media collective dedicated to the celebration, creation, curation and support of works by young queer folk. As well as that Aisha is a freelance creative director, visual artist and filmmaker currently studying at the National Film School, IADT in Ireland. With works ranging from music videos for bedroom pop and rap artists to documentaries tackling contemporary issues faced by the Black community, Aisha’s work is dedicated to showing the multitudes present in the Black experience.

Deputy Lord Mayor Mary-Rose Desmond, a Fianna Fáil Cllr for Cork City South East - Douglas, Rochestown, Donnybrook Grange Ballinlough, Blackrock. Ballintemple Mahon & Albert Road.

He is the Head of the Study of Religions, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Islam and Chair of the Race Equality Forum, University College Cork, Ireland.
He joined University College Cork in 2015 as Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Islam and is an affiliated member of staff of the University of Glasgow's Department of Theology and Religious Studies.

He has studied Arabic and Islam in France, Jordan, and Syria and has particular interest in Urdu and Punjabi poetry, or ghazals. His first book, The Crisis of Islamic Masculinities, was published with Bloomsbury Academic in January 2014. His second book, Judaism, Christianity and Islam: An Introduction to Monotheism, also published with Bloomsbury Academic in October 2020. Aman's books have been reviewed in The Times Higher Education, New Books in Islamic Studies USA and BBC Radio Scotland's 'Sunday Morning with...'. Amanullah is currently working on book projects relating to themes on contemporary and historical Islam and Muslims.

Amanullah is a Director at NASC Ireland (The Migrant and Refugee Rights Centre) and has twice been invited to lead Time for Reflection at the Scottish Parliament and has been a regular contributor to BBC Radio Scotland's 'Thought for the Day' and 'Sunday Morning' for over 15 years.

Joanna Dukkipati (she/her) gathers stories to produce podcasts, magazines and create multilingual prose/poetry gatherings so as to change the narrative and build a kind world. Joanna is is the founding editor of Good Day Cork, a digital magazine that amplifies unrepresented voices and offers an uplifting media diet.

She is the founder of #DouglassWeek and co-founder of the Globe Lane Initiative.

She is also a cultural manager, Goethe-Institut in Ireland and international educator and activist.

Before that, she taught at University College Cork for several years. In the last 15 years, she has dedicated her research and teaching to engaging students with the cinematic representation of slavery, racism and stereotyping, and making North American slavery on page and on screen accessible, visible and understandable for students. Her work also explores the foundations of modern-day, systemic racism, following the political, cultural and social developments and civil rights movements and she has been involved in a variety of diversity and inclusion efforts in Ireland and abroad, such as the Free The Slaves Initiative or Students Ending Slavery.
Her publications include Southern History on Screen: Race and Rights, 1976-2016 ; and more research appears on her website: www.cinematicslavenarratives.com.

Ehigie studies Corporate Law student at NUI Galway. He is the Politics Coordinator of Black and Irish, a YouTuber, podcaster, and a writer.

Mayor of Rochester, NY, USA.

Dr. Roja Fazaeli is Associate Professor of Islamic Civilisations at Trinity College Dublin and Warden of Trinity Hall, a residential learning community of 1,000 students. Roja has published widely on the subjects of Islamic feminisms, female religious authorities, women’s rights in Iran, and the relationship between human rights and religion. She is currently the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Immigrant Council of Ireland, member of the Board of Directors of Azadiye Andisheh (Freedom of Thought) and on the editorial board of the journal Religion and Human Rights.

He is a writer and editor, Cork, Ireland. Fenton received a PhD in History from University College Cork in 2003 before writing fiction while working as an archaeologist and bookseller across Ireland and England. He has worked as an editor, copy-editor and proofreader on everything from cookery magazines to travel guides to biographies of figures like Rory Gallagher and Oscar Wilde. He is author of Frederick Douglass in Ireland: ‘The Black O’Connell’ (2014) and ‘I Was Transformed’: Frederick Douglass – An American Slave in Victorian Britain (2018). Fenton is also a director of The Globe Lane Initiative.

Fiona holds a Bachelor of Law degree (BCL) and a Master of Law (LLM) from University College Cork. She has a particular interest in International Human Rights Law and Public International Law. Fiona has over two decades of experience working in the fields of social justice, human rights, asylum and immigration. Fiona joined Nasc in 2008. Fiona also holds a Diploma in Business Studies and Marketing and is a graduate of the Marketing Institute of Ireland.

He is the Executive Director of Fulbright Commission in Ireland.
He has a BSc and PhD in Biology & IT from Maynooth University and University College Cork, and has worked in IT and biomedical applications for 20 years. Dara has founded and headed up a number of companies and he acted as the US Federal Liaison for Enterprise Ireland in Washington DC and Dublin.

She is a University of Connecticut student; member of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe and member of the Native American Cultural Program (NACP).
Samantha Gove is an undergraduate Sociology and Psychological Sciences double major at the University of Connecticut. She has been doing work in social justice and activism for the past five years and is currently involved in the Human Rights and Action Learning Community, NAISA, and SES at UConn.

He is a Teaching Assistant in American Literature at the University of Limerick. He is also the Co-Editor in Chief at the Irish Journal of American Studies. He is a co-founder of #DouglassWeek.

He is an actor, writer, and director who initiated his signature solo performance Frederick Douglass Now as a senior honors project in American Studies at Occidental College. At Yale University, he worked as a graduate assistant at the Frederick Douglass Papers. He has since continued to play Douglass to international acclaim, while constructing an unparalleled body of work for the stage and screen. Smith adapted his Obie Award-winning A Huey P. Newton Story into a Peabody Award-winning telefilm. His Bessie Award-winning Rodney King is currently streaming on Netflix, both of which were directed for the screen by Smith's longtime colleague Spike Lee. Their many collaborations also include Do the Right Thing , for which Smith created the stuttering hero Smiley. His history-infused work for the stage includes studies of Christopher Columbus, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley, iconoclast artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Simon Rodia, and Charles White, baseball greats Juan Marichal and John Roseboro, and, most recently, Otto Frank, father of diarist Anne Frank. He has also devised theatrical travelogues of Iceland, Panama, New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Miami. His screen credits include work inspired by Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, Malcolm X, Michael Manley, Nat Turner, Madame CJ Walker, and Booker T. Washington, as well as the series "Queen Sugar," "K Street," and "Oz." Among the many distinguished venues which Frederick Douglass Now has played are The Public, Penumbra, and Lorraine Hansberry Theatres, the Kennedy Center, the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, and Brooklyn's Prospect Park, with the Branford Marsalis Quartet in celebration of the 2018 Douglass Bicentennial.

Mahito Indi Henderson is a Canadian American writer and actor based in Dublin. He is a graduate of University College Cork’s MA in Creative Writing programme, where he was a Putnam scholar and a recipient of the Government of Ireland International Education Scholarships (GOI-IES). He joined Skein Press in 2021 and is committed to addressing barriers to education and progression within the arts.

He is a Professor of History and Professor of Literatures, Cultures, & Languages, University of Connecticut. Kane is also associated with the Dodd Human Rights Institute and is a Director of the Student Learning Communities. He is from Reading, Pennsylvania, and received a B.A. in history from the University of Rochester, an M.Phil in Irish Studies from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and a PhD from Princeton. Prior to coming to the University of Connecticut in 2005, he spent a year as the NEH/Keough Fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough Institute of Irish Studies. Currently he serves as Vice-President/President-elect of the Celtic Studies Association of North America, elected Council Member of the North American Conference on British Studies, and co-director of the digital humanities project Léamh.org. Kane’s publications include Elizabeth I and Ireland (co-edited with Valerie McGowan-Doyle) (2014; paperback, 2017), Nobility and Newcomers in Renaissance Ireland (with Thomas Herron) (2013) and The politics and culture of honour in Britain and Ireland, 1541-1641, Cambridge University Press, Studies in Early Modern British History (2010; paperback 2014).

He is the Co-Founder, Irish Institute of Music and Song, Balbriggan, Ireland. After reading Law at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, he completed a Master’s (LL.M.) at the Irish Centre for Human Rights and secured a position as human rights researcher at the United Nations. Since then, Dónal has pursued a career in music as a performer and producer. As a soloist, he has performed in sixteen countries across three continents and has recorded internationally with World of Warcraft in California and Nintendo in Tokyo. Dónal has worked as a vocal coach with National Youth Choirs of Northern Ireland, National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, and he trained with Musicians Without Borders in 2015. He is a sought-after workshop facilitator and advocate of Irish folk song. For his full portfolio of creative projects, visit www.donal-kearney.com.

She is a MRes student of Photography at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art Design and Technology, Ireland.

Cllr Colm Kelleher is the current Lord Mayor of Cork, Ireland.

Find out more about Mayor Kelly at https://www.waterfordcouncil.ie/council/councillors/metropolitan/tramore-watcity-west/jkelly.htm

Victoria Kennefick's first collection Eat or We Both Starve (Carcanet, 2021) was shortlisted for the Costa 2021 Poetry Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize 2021. It was a book of the year in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Irish Times, The Sunday Independent and The White Review. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland, PN Review, The Stinging Fly, and elsewhere. A recipient of a Next Generation Artist Award from the Arts Council of Ireland, she has received bursaries from Kerry County Council and Words Ireland. She was a Fulbright Awardee from Ireland to Georgia College and State University.

He is the President, Dublin City University. Prof Daire Keogh began a ten-year term as President of DCU on July 14th 2020. Professor Keogh, a Dubliner, is a distinguished historian who served as President of St Patrick’s College Drumcondra, and as Deputy President of DCU since its Incorporation (2016) . He has published extensively, on the history of popular politics, religion and education in Ireland. Daire is a Fellow at the University Design Institute at Arizona State University. He was also a founding member of the European Quality Assurance Register Committee, the body charged by EU Governments with monitoring quality assurance in higher education across the continent. He is founding chair of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce Higher Education and Research Committee. He is a Chartered Director (IoD) and is a member of a number of boards, including the non-partisan Women for Election. A passionate educator, he plays a leadership role across the sector. He is a member of the Edmund Rice Schools Trust and Dublin City University’s Governing Authority. He is Chair of the Board of Marley Grange National School in Rathfarnham and a member of the Board of Management of Clongowes Wood College. He is a member of the Irish Association of the Order of Malta. He recently completed terms as a Council member of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, and as a member of the Board of the Centre for Cross Border Studies (2012-17). Daire is a graduate of the National University of Ireland (BA), the Gregorian University Rome (BPh), the University of Glasgow (MTh) and the University of Dublin (PhD). A former Government of Ireland Senior Research Fellow, he is currently Principal Investigator of an Irish Research Council funded project to publish the extensive correspondence of Cardinal Paul Cullen.

She is a Senior Advisor at the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives and the Founder of the Frederick Douglass Ireland Project. She is the co-founder of #DouglassWeek.

An attorney based in Washington, DC, she has extensive experience working with the U.S. government and nonprofit groups, labor unions, and policy organizations and building diverse coalitions around legislative and policy issues. She began her career on the staff of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy and has worked on many national political campaigns. Leary is patron of the Washington Ireland Program, a graduate of Boston College and the Catholic University School of Law.

Loah is Sallay-Matu Garnett, a singer songwriter of Irish /Sierra Leonian descent. She performs her unique blend of Afro-folksoul across solo projects and with collaborators including Hozier, Lisa Hannigan, Fehdah, and Bantum, and most recently during quarantine, Queens rapper Bas and Ron Gilmore Jr (J Cole, Ari Lennox). She starred as Mary Magdalene in the 2019 Barbican production of Jesus Christ Superstar. During the pandemic, she returned to her old vocation as a pharmacist to work on the frontline, and still continued to contribute culturally, co-presenting the primetime RTE show The Heart of Saturday Night with Úna Healy and in 2021 releasing When I Rise Up, an EP of poetry from the 1920s set to music.

Paula Martinez is a Brazillian Ecuadorian Masters student at UCD on Racial issues, migration issues and decolonisation. Martinez is part of two charities against direct provision and to help people in DP to carry a better life. Martinez is a racial justice advocate writing a thesis on Irishness and blackness.

She is a Programme Coordinator at Cork Migrant Centre, Nano Nagle Place, Cork, Ireland. She is a psychologist and a three-time graduate of University College Cork (BA, Applied Psychology: MA, Forensic Psychology; PhD specialising in the Psychosocial Wellbeing of Sub-Saharan African Migrant Children).

As a direct result of her PhD, she developed a culturally sensitive training program for front line service providers which she has delivered in UCC (Psychology and BSW courses), UCD (Clinical Psychology program), the Good Shepherd Cork among others. Also, as a direct result of her PhD Naomi was instrumental in setting up the Cork Migrant Centre Psychosocial Wellbeing and Integration Hub at the Nano Nagle Place, focused on culturally sensitive services and transformative social justice work. She is a guest lecturer at the School of Psychology Cork. Naomi was the recipient of UCC 2020 Athena SWAN Equality Award.

Dr. Tonya M. Matthews is a thought-leader in institutionalized equity and inclusion frameworks, social entrepreneurship, and the intersectionality of formal and informal education.

Her background as both poet and engineer have made her a highly sought-after visioning partner on boards and community building projects, as well as a frequent public speaker and presenter for communities across all ages and venues.

A non-profit executive leadership veteran, Dr. Matthews is currently Chief Executive Officer of the International African American Museum (IAAM) located in Charleston, SC at the historically sacred site of Gadsden’s Wharf. IAAM is a champion of authentic, empathetic storytelling of American history and thus, one of the nation’s newest platforms for the disruption of institutionalized racism as America continues the walk toward “a more perfect union.” Dr. Matthews has a storied career in leadership. Most recently, she served as Associate Provost for Inclusive Workforce Development & Director of the STEM Innovation Learning Center for Wayne State University and, prior to that, as the President & CEO of the Michigan Science Center – flexing her science and tech educational equity chops in both roles. Dr. Matthews credits her time at Wayne State University for a deeper understanding of the intersectionality of education, career, community agency, and self-efficacy which she refers to as the “pre-K through Gray” pipeline. While at the Michigan Science Center, she founded The STEMinista Project, a movement to engage girls in their future with STEM careers and tools. She continues this work today through STEMinista Rising, supporting professional women in STEM – and the colleagues who champion them – with an inclusive emphasis on women of color. Dr. Matthews’ dedication to community and her accomplishments is widely recognized. She was noted as one of the Most Influential Women in Michigan (Crain’s Business, 2016) and honored as Trailblazer by Career Mastered Magazine (2017). She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Science Education and was appointed by both Democratic and Republican administrations to the National Assessment Governing Board. Dr. Matthews is a published poet, included in 100 Best African-American Poems (2010) edited by Nikki Giovanni, and has written several articles and book chapters on inclusive governance, non-profit management, and fundraising.
Dr. Matthews received her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University and her B.S.E. in biomedical and electrical engineering from Duke University, alongside a certificate in African/African-American Studies. She is a member of Delta Sigma Sorority, Inc. and The Links, Inc. Dr. Matthews a native of Washington, D.C. and, in each community she has settled, is known for planting roots on the side of town best for keeping an eye on progress.

She is a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar at the School of English, University College Cork. She is also a singer-songwriter and the Secretary for the Irish Association for American Studies. She is a co-founder of #DouglassWeek.

McCreedy also teaches a number of undergraduate modules in 19th-21st century American literature. Her thesis explores the resurgence of American literary naturalism in contemporary American fiction.

He is an IT professional who has serviced government agencies, nonprofits, corporations, financial and banking institutions and small-businesses within the DC-Baltimore metropolitan area, Western Maryland and Potomac Highlands for the last decade, is a doting husband and father of 3, ADOS historian, essayist and playwright. McNeil has been featured in the pages of the Washington Post, contributed columns to the Washington Informer and been interviewed on the television and radio airwaves of News Channel 8 (Washington, D.C.), WBAL (Baltimore), WPFW (Washington, D.C), WEAA (Baltimore) and ABC 47 (Maryland’s Eastern Shore). McNeil attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.

McNeil is co-founder, with John Muller, of Lost History Associates and is at work with Muller on forthcoming publications on Frederick Douglass in several specific regions in the Mid-Atlantic area.

She is the Executive Director of Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives in Rochester, NY.

He is the Co-Founder & President, Rochester, NY-based Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives. Morris is the great-great-great-grandson of Frederick Douglass and the great-great-grandson of Booker T. Washington. He continues his family’s legacy of anti-slavery and educational work as co-founder and president of the Rochester, NY-based nonprofit Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives (FDFI).

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Muir is he Fundraising and Communications Executive for Anti-Slavery International.

He is the author of Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia (2012) and Mark Twain in Washington, D.C.: The Adventures of a Capital Correspondent (2013), has presented widely throughout the DC-Baltimore metropolitan area at venues including the Library of Congress, Enoch Pratt Library, DC Public Library, Frederick Douglass National Historic Site and local universities. Muller is a frequent guest on Washington, D.C. radio stations and has been cited by the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, Cumberland Times-News and other publications for his local history research and subject matter expertise. He has been featured on C-SPAN’s BookTV and C-SPAN’s American History TV, broadcast airwaves of NBC4 (Washington), WDVM (Hagerstown) and radio stations WPFW (DC), WAMU (DC), WYPR (Baltimore), WEAA (Baltimore) and Delmarva Public Radio (Eastern Shore). For the past decade Muller has contributed hundreds of articles to local and national print and online news sources, including the Washington Informer.

Muller and Justin McNeil are co-founders of Lost History Associates and are at work on forthcoming publications on Frederick Douglass in several specific regions in the Mid-Atlantic area

Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Geography, Bucknell University. Mulligan’s research and teaching focus on the role that places play in both producing but also countering norms of nationalism, race, gender and sexuality. His publications cover a broad array of topics, for example researching Irish abolitionism and Frederick Douglass’s lecture tour, uncovering the role of the Ladies’ Land League in the Irish Land War, considering sexuality in American St. Patrick’s Day Parades, and exploring citizenship and multiculturalism in postcolonial modern Ireland.

She is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the recovery of African American oratorical, literary and visual testimony in Britain during the nineteenth century. Her published books include Advocates of Freedom: African American Transatlantic Abolitionism in the British Isles (2020)- the accompanying website maps Black activist speaking locations across Britain and Ireland- and Frederick Douglass in Britain and Ireland 1845-1895 (2021), co-authored with John Kaufman-McKivigan. She has organized numerous community events including talks, primary and secondary school workshops, heritage plaques, performances, podcasts, plays, exhibitions and walking tours on both sides of the Atlantic.

She is a English Ph.D. candidate at the University of Limerick whose research centering on third generation African writers and Afrofuturists who have emerged during the era of late liberalism and who have introduced multiple and nuanced perspectives for reflecting on African lives and aspirations. Co-producer, Unsilencing Black Voices documentary detailing personal stories and accounts by members of the Black community in Ireland. Ndahiro’s work now highlights the lived experiences of the Black and Irish community with her recent publication of her essay ‘Irishness does not mean whiteness.’

She is a Fulbright scholar at the University of Connecticut; producer of the Gaelic-Algonquian language workshop. Muireann Nic Corcráin achieved her Bachelors (hons) in TSM Modern Irish and History in 2020 from Trinity College Dublin from which she progressed on to a Masters in Speech and Language Processing in the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences (SLSCS) in Trinity College Dublin. Her masters research project focuses on augmentative communication devices development for the Irish language. She is a former Oifigeach na Gaeilge of Trinity College Students’ Union, winning the Éacht ar Son na Gaeilge Award at the Student Achievement Awards 2020 for her campaign to have the síneadh fada included on student ID cards in TCD. She is also a former Youth Representative on the National GAA Youth Committee and current PRO of Enniscorthy Hockey Club. Muireann has an interest in second language acquisition and language accessibility for those with disabilities and she is a keen sportsperson.

Dr. Carolann North is a lecturer at Ulster University specializing in speculative fiction and contemporary identity politics. Recent publications include ‘Sacha Levy’s Unorthodox Kindness: Holby City’s Medicine and Pedagogy’ in The Journal of Popular Television (2021) and ‘‘The Ethics of Quantum Colonialism’: Navigating American Racial Anxiety in N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became’ in The Irish Journal of American Studies (2021). Her upcoming publications include Chuck Palahniuk and the Postmodern American Absurdist (Routledge, 2022) and Phenomenal Women: A Collection of Creative Writing (BCRC Press, 2022). She is also an Arts Council award recipient for her poetry, and the winner of The 9th Annual Bangor Poetry Competition. Finally, she is the curator of the Books Beyond Boundaries NI project, which aims to foster cultural diversity in SFF writing on the island of Ireland.

She is a youth project worker, and a mentor at Cork Migrant Centre (CMC), has been involved in shaping the project. Other supporters include beloved, vivacious local radio DJ, Stevie Grainger (Stevie G); artists and pupils at Migrant Centre; and the Cork cultural and heritage centre, Nano Nagle Place.

She is a Programme Manager at Nano Nagle Place, Cork, Ireland. Nano Nagle Place is a 3.5 acre heritage site comprising Georgian convent buildings and Victorian schools and chapel, set in extensive walled gardens. The on-site museum tells the story of Nano Nagle, an educationalist who founded schools during the penal era and established the Presentation Sisters. The aim of the museum is to tell the story of the past while continuing the fight for social justice in the present. O’Donovan's research interests span architectural history and creative education.

Gráinne O’Toole is an editor and human rights activist. She has an MA in Creative Writing from University College Dublin and has a background in social policy and law. She established Skein Press in 2018 to publish books featuring themes not often represented in Irish publishing. Gráinne has worked in the community and voluntary sector for over 25 years at senior management level with a range of communities who are underrepresented in Irish society.

He is a MFA candidate, Art in the Contemporary World, National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland. Pentek is the creator of over 30 large scale public realm works in Ireland, UK, Canada, and Australia, including the Kindred Spirits sculpture in Midleton, Cork, Ireland, commemorating the 1847 donation by the Choctaw Tribe to Irish famine relief during the Great Hunger. He was awarded the commission and recently completed a large scale public realm work in Washington, DC. Titled Unity and installed in August 2021, this reflects the achievements of black activist Charles Hamilton Houston who abolished the ‘Jim Crow’ laws of racist segregation after serving in WWI.
His gallery-based practice explores contemporary scientific and philosophical ideas in temporary non-comodifiable mediums such as folded paper and sound performance which have been exhibited in Ireland, UK, Germany, US and Australia. To make the paper elements of this work he employs the discipline of rigid origami to create complex tessellated surfaces that symbolize a holistic ethos, where each folded facet is interconnected. Making this work requires methods inspired by his experience as a drummer, where muscle memory is employed through rudimentary exercises to allow an intuitive approach. Similarly, through a series of repeated folds, the cognitive processes needed to achieve some of these more complex works are extended beyond the physical confines of the body into the material itself. This material-led research particularly interests Pentek in relation to Extended Cognitive Theory proposed by Any Clarke and David Chalmers.
Future research interests include exploring the success and failure of language through the late philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He also aims to continue to investigate how origami can inform materials-led research such as in robotics education and how robotic kinematic elements may become incorporated into his work. In June 2021 he co-presented a paper linking origami with robotics at the Engineering Education for Sustainable Development annual conference. In September 2021 he was artist in residence in the new Design Thinking, Pedagogy and Praxis programme, University College Cork and interests in maths, science, origami, interconnectedness, and music inform his work on both practical and philosophical levels.

She is an IRC Postdoctoral Fellow at UCC where she is completing her monograph Women Writing the Margins. She is currently collaborating with poet Sophie Meehan and digital artist, Áine O’Hara on an Arts Council funded project to recuperate and create a digital archive of working-class writing. Emma is also organising Ireland’s first Working-Class Studies Conference with the support of an IRC New Foundations Award and is a member of the Steering Committee of the Working-Class Studies Association of America. As a Fulbright-NUI Scholar, Emma will travel to Howard University in Washington, DC where she will consult the archives of the National Welfare Rights Organisation paying special attention to the creative writing produced by grassroots women’s groups as part of a welfare rights movement. She will be based at the Cathy Hughes School of Communication where she will work closely with Dr. Monica Ponder and Dr. Loren Saxton-Coleman on their CDC Foundation-funded project, Project REFOCUS, which addresses social stigma related to COVID-19 and racism. Through transnational archival practice, Emma will explore how writing cultures can be collectively transformative and could offer a non-traditional response during public health crises, where the experience of racism impacts significantly on people’s mental well-being, health behavior and access to health care services.

Kimberly Reyes is the author of the poetry collections Running to Stand Still (Omnidawn 2019) and Warning Coloration (dancing girl press 2018), and the upcoming poetry collection Vanishing Point (Omnidawn 2023). Her nonfiction book of essays Life During Wartime (Fourteen Hills 2019) won the 2018 Michael Rubin Book Award. Published and anthologized in numerous, international outlets, Reyes writes about identity, ecology, and sexuality, and spends her time between Ireland, San Francisco and New York City. She was a Fulbright Awardee from the USA to University College Cork, Ireland in 2019.

He is a New York City-based singer and dancer, currently starring in the national touring company of Dear Evan Hansen. He appeared in the original Broadway cast of Mean Girls: The Musical directed by Tina Fey. Saboo is also working on an album of music inspired by his 2021 journey with Paul Stovall through Ireland retracing Frederick Douglass’s footsteps.

Dr Amin Sharifi Isaloo is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology & Criminology at University College Cork, Ireland. He is the author of the book ‘Power, Legitimacy and the Public Sphere: The Iranian Ta’ziyeh Theatre Ritual’. His fields of interest include politics, religion and culture, focusing on sociological and anthropological interpretations of symbols, images and ritual performances. His recent published articles are ‘Liminality in the Direct Provisional system - Living under extreme rules and conditions (2020)’, Leaving asylum seekers in liminality: The Covid-19 pandemic and Direct Provision in Ireland’ (2021), and Liminality and Modern Racism’ (2021).

Skein Press is a writer-centred publishing house. We support writers traditionally underrepresented in Irish literature by publishing beautiful, thought-provoking books. We also offer development opportunities designed to create a more inclusive literary landscape.

He is the Inaugural Kates Professor of English and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University. Stauffer is author or editor of 20 books and over 100 articles, including national bestseller GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln and the award-winning Black Hearts of Men, Battle Hymn of the Republic, and Picturing Frederick Douglass. His essays and reviews have appeared in Time, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and in exhibition catalogs, journals, and books. In addition to his teaching, he is curating an exhibition on Frederick Douglass for the Smithsonian Museum's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., scheduled to open in June 2023; and at work on a book on the abolitionist and civil rights leader Charles Sumner.

He is a critically-acclaimed writer and actor, currently starring as George Washington in the national tour of Hamilton. Stovall is also working on both an album of music initiated during his 2021 journey with Nikhil Saboo through Ireland retracing Frederick Douglass’s footsteps and a limited series for television about Frederick Douglass in Ireland.

He is the Angle Chair in the Humanities and Professor of History, University of Nebraska. Thomas was co-founder and director of the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Lincoln Prize Finalist.

“When the Enslaved Sued for Freedom" with William G. Thomas III, Angle Chair in the Humanities and Professor of History, University of Nebraska

On the inspiring stories behind his new book A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery From the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War.
For over seventy years and five generations, the enslaved families of Prince George’s County, Maryland filed hundreds of suits for their freedom against a powerful circle of slaveholders, taking their cause all the way to the Supreme Court. Between 1787 and 1861, these lawsuits challenged the legitimacy of slavery in American law and put slavery on trial in the nation’s capital. Piecing together evidence once dismissed in court and buried in the archives, historian William G. Thomas tells an intricate and intensely human story of the enslaved families (the Butlers, Queens, Mahoneys and others), their lawyers (among them a young Francis Scott Key), and the slaveholders who fought to defend slavery, beginning with the Jesuit priests who held some of the largest plantations in the nation and founded a college at Georgetown. How could the enslaved sue for freedom and use laws passed by slaveholders to challenge slavery itself? How did the Jesuits become the principal slaveholders defending slavery in court? Why did Francis Scott Key represent the Queen family, and how did their case shape American law and the course of slavery in the U.S.?

As Prof. Thomas dug deeply into archives, he uncovered information that upended his understanding of his own family history. Among his ancestors were major players in the story of the Queen family’s quest for freedom, including a lawyer who defended the Jesuits against the Queen family and a judge who ruled in favor of the Queens’ bid for freedom. A Question of Freedom asks us to reckon with the moral problem of slavery and its legacies today.

Ash Tifa (she/they) is a Trans Revolutionary, Community organizer, and Abolitionist that has fought tirelessly for human rights globally. She is a graduate of Law at University College Cork, and has also studied International law at Université de Montréal. From working to end direct provision in Ireland with communities seeking asylum, to organizing direct actions against police brutality on the front lines on the streets of New York City, her work has and continues to effectuate change across the world'.

Unapologetic is a multidisciplinary, literary, cultural, and artistic response to the social issues and creative opportunities of contemporary Ireland.

He is an Associate professor of English and Associate Chair of the English Department, Rutgers University. His fields of expertise include African American literature and cultural studies, nineteenth-century American literature, the history and representation of American slavery, and gender studies. He is the author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men’s Literature and Culture, 1775-1995, a book on the history of black manhood in African American letters and culture, and is co-editor with Shawn Michelle Smith of a volume of scholarly articles on early photography and African American identity entitled Pictures and Progress: Early Photography and the Making of African-American Identity. Professor Wallace has served on the editorial boards for American Literature and Yale Journal of Criticism and is a contributing editor to James Baldwin Review. His current research and writing agendas include a monograph on the religious life and leanings of Frederick Douglass, and a critical exploration into the sound of Martin Luther King Jr.’s voice. Professor Wallace also teaches in areas of visual culture and sound studies.

She is a Delegate (Washington, DC) for the United States House of Representatives

The Working-Class Writing Archive (workingclasswritingarchive.ie) is a website and collection which brings together writing by working-class writers and groups in Dublin that has never been catalogued, preserved or archived before, and in some cases would otherwise have been lost forever.