academy for irish cultural heritages - Research - University of Ulster

Dr Jane McKee
Jane McKee grew up in North Antrim and studied at Trinity College Dublin before being appointed in 1973 to the
staff of St Patrick’s College, Maynooth where she taught until December 1985. In January 1986 she joined the staff
of the University of Ulster (Magee campus) where she is today a Senior Lecturer in French. She has served on the
University Council and is currently a member of the University Senate.
Qualifications
She read French and Spanish at Tinity College Dublin and graduated in 1969. Her Ph.D. (‘The Humanism of
Romain Gary’), was also completed at Trinity College
Research
Current research is focused on the correspondences of the seventeenth century clergyman Charles Drelincourt
and on his sons and she has also published papers on Charles Drelincourt and two of his sons, Laurent, the last of
the Huguenot poets and Pierre who became Dean of Armagh in 1691. She has also published on French Huguenot
and Enlightenment holdings in Irish church libraries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Before 1991 her research and publication was mostly in the area of Computer-assisted language learning
She has also run a number of research projects and published articles on aspects of teaching, including distance
learning, the integration of key skills into the languages curriculum and tandem learning. She was a member
of the Ulster team involved in the FDTL-funded SMILE project (Strategies for Managing Independent Learning
Environments).
Dr Willa Murphy
Willa Murphy was born and grew up North of Boston, Massachusetts, and studied English at Brigham Young
University in Provo, Utah. She obtained an MA in theology and a PhD in English from the University of Notre
Dame in South Bend, Indiana. Before her appointment to the University of Ulster, she was a Research Fellow in
Women’s Studies at the University of Limerick, and had also taught English and theology at NUI-Maynooth and
at St Patrick’s College, Dublin City University. She is currently Lecturer in Irish Writing in English in the Academy
for Irish Cultural Heritages, University of Ulster. Her main field of research is nineteenth-century Irish writing
in English, with particular attention to women’s writing. She is also interested in the intersection of literature
and religious language, and is currently researching connections between evangelicalism and women’s writing in
nineteenth-century Ireland. Her teaching includes these topics, but also extends to contemporary women’s writing,
colonial and nineteenth-century American literature, and feminist and post-colonial theory.
Qualifications
PhD, University of Notre Dame, 2001;
MA, English, University of Notre Dame, 1994);
MA, Systematic Theology, Notre Dame, 1990;
BA (Honors), English, Brigham Young University, 1989
Research Interests
Nineteenth Century Irish and English writing
Nineteenth Century American writing
Critical Theory (particularly feminism and post-colonialism)
Religion and Literature Twentieth Century
Irish Women’s Writing
Prof Máiréad Nic Craith
Professor Máiréad Nic Craith is Director of the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages at the University of Ulster
(Northern Ireland). She has previously held an Irish-Government sponsored post at the University of Liverpool
and tutored at University College Cork. She also held a visiting fellowship at the Department of Politics in
University College Dublin. Máiréad’s research draws on the social sciences and is interdisciplinary. She is author
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