Heather Laird

Heather Laird is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, University College Cork. She completed an IRC-funded doctoral thesis under the supervision of Declan Kiberd at University College Dublin in 2002 and was the James and Mary Fox Postdoctoral Fellow with the Centre for Irish Studies at NUI Galway from 2003 to 2005. Her publications include Subversive Law in Ireland, 1879-1920 (2005), Commemoration (2018), "Ulysses, the Cattle Economy and the Unwritten Agrarian Code" (James Joyce Quarterly, 2022) and "Partition" (New Literary History: Irish Keywords Special Issue, 2025).

She is a member of the editorial team of Síreacht: Longings for Another Ireland, a Cork University Press series of short topical texts that explore the potential of ideas commonly dismissed as utopian. She has considerable experience of communicating her research outside the university, in the form of radio interviews, television appearances, RTÉ Brainstorm and The Conversation UK articles, and public lectures.

Her current book project, "Land and Literature in Modern Ireland: Decolonising the Field", explores Irish writing in English from the founding of the Free State until the current day in the context of land ownership, occupancy and usage. She has mentored four IRC-funded Postdoctoral Fellowships and is currently host mentor of "Waking the Dead: Fiction and the Archival Gap in Ireland, India and the Black Atlantic", a three-year Global Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Heather is a postcolonial scholar whose research crosses disciplinary boundaries between literature, history and law. Her scholarly interests include theories and practices of resistance, especially as they relate to land usage; critical/radical historical frameworks; links between Ireland, India and Palestine; law and literature; the intersection between class and gender; and Irish culture since the early nineteenth century. While wide-ranging in scope, her research is characterised by its focus on socio-political and cultural structures that lie outside of and/or counter the imperial power politics and colonial capitalism that have helped produce our contemporary crisis-afflicted world. Her critical perspective also informs her creative practice, including her published works of creative non-fiction. 

2025-28: MSCA Global Postdoctoral Fellowship "101202817 Daniel Shanahan" Dr H. Laird: Waking the Dead - Fiction and the Archival Gap in Ireland, India and the Black Atlantic. European Commission. €426,434.00

2024-25: SATLE, Undergraduate Research Mentorship (with Dr M. Corcoran): UCC Department of English Undergraduate Research Journal Enhancement Initiative. National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. €1,089.00

2023-26: IRC "GOIPG/2023/4586 Hope Noonan Stoner" Professor L. Jenkins and Dr H. Laird: Transnational and Diasporic Connections in the Modernist Poetry of Lola Ridge and Julia de Burgos. €82,500.00

2023-24: SATLE, Undergraduate Research Mentorship (with Dr M. Corcoran and Dr E. Semple): UCC Department of English Undergraduate Research Journal Enhancement Initiative. National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. €1,008.36

2022-25: IRC "GOIPG/2022/220 Clodagh Heffernan" Dr H. Laird and Dr A. Hanna: Protest Writing and Dissent Culture in Contemporary Working-Class Ireland - Poetics of Defiance. €82,500.00

2020-22: IRC "GOIPD/2020/810 Edward Molloy" Dr H. Laird: Between History and Revolution - Radical Separatism in Ireland from Tone to Pearse. €109,570.00

2020-21: IRC "GOIPD/2020/780 Emma Penney" Dr. H. Laird: Social Class and the Women's Movement in Ireland - A Second Look at the Second Wave. €53,217.00

2015-18: IRC "GOIPG/2025/3571 Martin McConigley" Dr H. Laird and Dr M. O'Connor: The Border in Contemporary Irish Fiction 1970-2014. €70,652.00

2015-18: IRC "GOIPG/2015/3347 Yen-Chi Wu" Professor C. Connolly and Dr H. Laird: John McGahern and Modernity. €70,652.00

2015-17: IRC "GOIPD/2015/687 Adam Hanna" Dr H. Laird: Literature and Legislation in Ireland - Poetic Justice. €89,065.00

2014-17: IRC "GOIPG/2014/11 Rebecca Graham" Dr M. O'Connor and Dr. H. Laird: An Ecofeminist Reading of Éilis Ní Dhuibhne's Fiction. €69,711.00

2013-14: IRC "GOIPD/2013/394 Liam Lanigan" Dr H. Laird: Dublins of the Future - The City in Irish Modernism. €43,626.00

Heather's two main areas of teaching are prose fiction and theory. She teaches a broad selection of lecture and seminar modules across all levels (1st year, 2nd year, 3rd year, MA), and has supervised/co-supervised 43 MA dissertations and 15 BA dissertations. Her teaching in the area of prose fiction includes: EN1012 Literature in Question (postcolonial/migration fiction); EN2071 Women and Literature; EN3077 The Irish Revival and Irish Modernism; and EN3006 Reading Ulysses. Her teaching in the area of theory includes EN6024 Ireland and Modernity and WS6007 Feminist Methodologies. She has completed a Postgraduate Certificate and a Postdoctoral Diploma in Teaching and Learning, and in 2021 established an online undergraduate research journal for UCC Department of English students.

James Dineen, "Thunder / Perfect Mind: A Novel" (co-supervising)

Hope Noonan Stoner, "Transnational and Diasporic Connections in the Modernist Poetry of Lola Ridge and Julia de Burgos" (co-supervising)

Clodagh Heffernan, "Protest Writing and Dissent Culture in Contemporary Working-Class Ireland: Poetics of Defiance" (co-supervising)

Jordan Lillis, "Natural Beauty: A Selection of Short Fiction" (co-supervising)

John William O'Boyle, "Europa 2999: A Decolonial Speculative Novel" (co-supervising)

2025: Geoffrey Gould, "Contexts and Developments in Contemporary Irish Play Writing" (co-supervised)

2024: Éadaoin Regan, "A Method to the Madness: Representations of Female Psychological Disorder in Irish Women's Fiction, 1878-1914" (co-supervised)

2021: Felicity (Flicka) Small, "The Semiotics of Food in James Joyce's Ulysses" 

2019: Yen-Chi Wu, "John McGahern and Modernity: Reshaping the Irish Literary Landscape" (co-supervised)

2019: Martin McConigley, "The Impact of the Border on Irish Fiction, 1969-2016" (co-supervised)