I completed my BA in Drama & Theatre Studies (with French) at Trinity College Dublin, and followed this with an MA in Film Studies in University College Dublin. This led me back to Trinity where I combined my research areas of theatre and film with a PhD project that concentrated on the relationship between the Abbey Theatre and cinema from the beginning of the sound period until the 1960s. More recently my focus has been on contemporary Irish film and filmmakers, which I approach from historical, aesthetic and theoretical angles. In my monographs The Films of Lenny Abrahamson: A Filmmaking of Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2018) and Hands on Film: Actants, Aesthetics, Affects (Amsterdam University Press, 2022), I have aimed to integrate innovative ways of thinking about film conceptually and stylistically, with a pedagogical sensitivity to the inquisitive reader.

I frequently contribute to regional, national and international cinema-related cultural events that have included public interviews with filmmakers, writers and performers, themed seminars, Q&A sessions, and panel discussions in a variety of institutions. These include (or have included) the Schull Fastnet International Film Festival, the Cork International Film Festival, the Cork Indie Film Festival, the Irish Film Institute, the Queen's Film Theatre (Belfast) the Rome Ireland Film Festival, and the Puerto Vallarta International Film Festival in Mexico.

Recently I worked with Crónán Ó Doibhlin (Interim University Librarian/Head of Collections) on the acquisition for University College Cork of the Richard Harris Archive. Following several years of negotiations with members of the Harris family, it was agreed that the precious personal collection of artefacts, writing, photographs and memorabilia owned and gathered by the celebrated Irish artist will be housed in the Boole Library. This wonderful cache of materials will provide a fascinating resource for researchers and enthusiasts interested in exploring the life and legacy of the internationally renowned writer and performer. 

I am currently supervising five full-time doctoral students – including one Irish Research Council Award recipient, and one College Excellence Scholar – one of whom is co-supervised with Dr Daragh O'Connell (Head of Department of Italian).

I would be happy to discuss supervision of any Doctoral or Postdoctoral projects in areas relating to my research including, but not restricted to:
* Irish cinema (history/contemporary);
* Irish filmmakers and production personnel;
* National and international cinemas;
* Philosophy and film;
* Ireland's theatre or literature on screen;
* Film and theory/film theory;
* Performance analysis;
* National or international film censorship;
* Documentary film;
* Amateur filmmaking;
* Film ecocriticism;
* Film and literature;
* Independent cinema.  

Since the completion of my PhD research into a specific period in the history of Irish cinema (1930-1960), and specifically into the relationship between Irish theatre and film, I have continued to expand and explore thematic strands from this field – around aesthetics, theoretical and textual analysis – into the contemporary context. My areas of interest range widely across approaches to post-1990s Irish visual culture (informed by a variety of paradigms from gender, genre, and star studies, to poststructural, postnational, and postmodern frameworks), and I am interested in various aesthetic features of visual media including performance studies and technical developments. Most of my published work is motivated by a pedagogical desire to explore the intersections between novel analytical and conceptual considerations of the medium, and reader-friendly applications of theoretical frameworks in ways that inform each strand (presenting what film might reveal about theory, and how cinematic "texts" might test philosophical concepts, as much as the opposite).