My research typically addresses the following themes:
Manuscripts
I am currently Principal Investigator of the Research Ireland Pathway programme project Early Irish Hands: The Development of Writing in Early Ireland. This project investigates the manuscript culture of medieval Ireland, with a particular focus on the study of early Irish script, writing techniques, and the materiality of manuscripts. I am also co-I of Wandering Books, which seeks to integrate methodologies for localizing manuscripts, including material and palaeographic analysis, corpus philology, textual criticism and genetics.
Martyrologies
Research on the Martyrology of Óengus (Félire Óengusso), an early ninth-century metrical martyrology in Old Irish, as well as the devotional and literary aspects of insular martyrologies and calendars in general. For this latter purpose, I curated the exhibition HOLY TIME and launched the MARTRAE network, through which I hope to channel further collaborative research. Read more about the Félire on Félire Óengusso Online. The Celebrating the Saints conference, which was held in Trinity College in 2016, was also part of this project. An edited volume based on martyrologies in the insular world is currently nearing completion. (Watch for updates!)
Irish Cultural Heritage
I am running a pilot project called CLÓSCAPE which investigates the roll-out of cló gaelach street signage in Dublin City. This project grew out of the Irish in Outlook project as well as the Early Irish Hands project. As part of this project, I will create a digital archive and survey of Dublin cló gaelach street signage.
Digital Humanities
Most of my projects involve DH elements, including python (EIH), digitisation and digital curation (CLÓSCAPE, MARTRAE). I also teach digital codicology and palaeography elements on the M.Phil. in Medieval Studies and I am a member of ANTIDOTE, an Erasmus+ consortium which teaches digital humanities methodologies for working with pre-modern texts (2024-27).
Eschatology
I have produced significant research on individual eschatology, the transmission of religious ideas, and apocrypha. I have previously written on the rhetoric of catastrophe and salvific measures in relation to apocalyptic rhetoric in an article on the twelfth-century text the Second Vision of Adomnán (edited in The End and Beyond, ed. J. Carey, et al. 2014), and on the context of the earliest adaptation of the Visio Pauli. I am currently preparing a monograph Journeys to the Afterlife: Moral Eschatology in Early Medieval Ireland for publication, based on my doctoral work on visions of the afterlife, and on my experiences gained from the project ‘From Revelation to Ritual: Comparative Perspectives on Agency and Authority in Journeys to the Afterlife, 650-900’, which was generously supported by the Internationales Kolleg für Geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung in Erlangen. In most of these studies I also touch upon elements of literary theory, especially didactic writing and genre studies.
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