I haven’t checked into this blog in a while and I’ve discovered multiple half-written unpublished posts since starting my job on the LIVE Project. That was over 5 years ago. Scary. I swear the earth is turning faster, that can only explain the lapse in my perception, between my time, my intentions and my actions, in trying to keep this website alive and updated.
It’s now January 2026, and I am reviving this little blog, because I am about to embark on the journey of a lifetime, for me anyway. I have been accepted to do a PhD in Public Humanities with the University of Limerick, and I will be blogging about this journey here. Wish me luck!
Structured PhD in Public Humanities:
It’s aimed for public humanities professionals who wish to deepen their engagement with their work, and to use their current professional practice as the basis for doctoral-level research.
The reason why I chose this PhD programme is because of its flexibility. Aimed at a multitude of professions, with different backgrounds, for example: museum, gallery, and library professionals; public engagement specialists; arts managers; festival makers; curators; media professionals; public historians and writers. And people like me, who has a ‘diverse education and career portfolio’ (as someone on LinkedIn said once), who works contract to contract, on different types of arts and community projects.
Taught modules will take place across the first four semesters on topics such as Public Humanities, Professional Development for AHSS PhD Students, Critical Approaches to Display and Participation, Critical Contexts for Arts Management and Cultural Policy. I’m very excited to start as these taught modules will give me the practise and expertise I need, to write more critically about a topic close to my heart.
Research
So what is my individual project? Well, if it’s anything like my Masters, I will go in with one idea and out with something completely different, inspired by topics and theories I learned on the journey. But what I am starting my research on is the current and historical use of folk and craft methods and tools for political expression in Ireland, such as from awareness campaigns, to fighting injustices.
There are many books and papers on the use of craft in political expression in different countries around the world. I know because it’s been a passion of mine to read about them, and have gathered quite the niche book collection on the subject. Arts and activism have always gone hand in hand together, we have many documented cases of artists making political statements, through-provoking artwork, paintings, music, etc, that comment on social and environmental injustices. However these are usually people who already have a platform, and whose voices and work are easily heard.
As a maker and a community activist, I have made the most simple and the most bizarre things over the years for different campaigns including:
- crocheted plastic into a coral reef to highlight the destruction of coral reefs as an environmental crisis.
- painted on oversized knickers and hung them on a washing line outside a courthouse to showcase the damage the 8th Amendment (ban on abortion) was doing to Irish women.
- crocheted 100’s of watermelon keychains to promote solidarity with Palestinian genocide and raise vital funds.
I know many others who have also creatively campaigned over the years, but the record is fragmented. It is still an underground niche community, not always loud and documented. Soft protest they call it now, the use of crafts for political campaigns.
I am looking to conduct historical research on the use of craft skills in underground movements in Ireland, from banners made for the suffragette movement, hats, tshirts, badges, sizes, a multitude of hand-crafted media made from both Repeal the 8 (x2), and gay marriage. But what about the quiet acts of activism, those of use who make preemie hats and burial shrouds for maternity hospitals.
There are so many people out there creating, making, mending: to support, raise awareness and raise funds for things they care about deeply within their community, local and global, and I want to document this journey, especially now as we go through a political existential crisis.
Image: Suffragette Girl. Unknown Photographer, Public Domain vis Wiki Commons
So, what do you think ?