Photography by Kevin Settee
I am an Irish researcher and oral song practitioner, currently working as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Trans-Disciplinary Research and Graduate Studies (STRGS), University of South Africa (UNISA).
I completed my PhD in English Literature at the Centre for Postcolonial Studies, LNU, Sweden, under the supervision of Dr. Barzoo Eliassi, Prof. Madina Tlostanova, and Prof. Lillis Ó Laoire. My doctoral thesis, Songing Dúchas: Amhránaíocht as Decolonial Epistemic Disobedience, was successfully defended on 6 March 2025 and passed without corrections. Professor Nokuthula Hlabangane (UNISA) served as external opponent, with an examination committee comprising Professor Manuela Boatcă (University of Freiburg), Professor Tríona Ní Shíocháin (University of Galway), and Dr. Stiofán Ó Cadhla (University College Cork).
My research concerns the coloniality of knowledge, the epistemic violence of Anglo-modernity, and the philosophical traditions of peoples whose ways of knowing have been subordinated through imperialism and colonialism. Working across liberation philosophy, anti-racist sociology, oralitura, and artistic research, I investigate the historical production of epistemic hierarchies, especially in Ireland, and the possibilities of thinking from Gaelic intellectual traditions beyond the conceptual limits imposed by colonial knowledge systems. Central to this work is the articulation of dúchas, oideas, seanchas, and amhránaíocht as Gaelic philosophical concepts through which coloniality is confronted on epistemic terms.
My current postdoctoral research at the School for Trans-Disciplinary Research (STRGS) at the University of South Africa (UNISA) develops songing as a decolonial methodology of intervention, bringing Irish-language oral practice into horizontal, inter-epistemic dialogue with indigenous oral song practitioners in Azania-Zimbabwe and Abya Yala. Through my encounters with oral knowledge practitioners from the Sean-Nós singing tradition, exchanges with knowledge bearers other zones of colonized experience, philosophical inquiry, and artistic practice, I reflect on how songing articulates ways of knowing and world-making that contest the epistemic violence of Anglo- and Euro-modernity. This research contributes to a broader project of inter-epistemic decoloniality, grounded in the epistemic autonomy of colonized peoples and the possibility of thinking across distinct cosmological and philosophical traditions.
To learn more about my research, click on the Research link below, or scroll down for direct links to my academic publications.
Links to Publications
Cancionar como metodología de intervención decolonial: Amhránaíocht y desobediencia epistémica gaélica
Estudios Artísticos, 2026, 12(21), 41–56.
Resumen
Este artículo propone cancionar como una metodología de intervención decolonial, derivada de la práctica oral gaélica de la amhránaíocht y articulada en diálogo con debates latinoamericanos sobre investigación-creación y epistemologías del Sur. A través de la puesta en relación entre prácticas cosmosonorosas, como el yoik y el cante-gitano, el artículo argumenta que los marcos anglo-modernos han reproducido jerarquías epistémicas anglocéntricas que operan para obstaculizar y despotenciar la descolonización-decolonialidad del saber. Frente a este impase, el texto se apoya en pensadores indígenas gaélicos para realinear el pensamiento decolonial con una epistemología relacional, oral y situada. Cancionar se presenta así no como un objeto estético, sino como una práctica metodológica que interrumpe la lógica extractiva del conocimiento anglo-moderno y habilita formas de investigación basadas en la relacionalidad y la sanación. Esta propuesta se sitúa en el marco de la investigación artística y transdisciplinaria, en diálogo con pensamiento del Sur Global.
Palabras clave: Cancionar; desobediencia epistémica; descolonización-decolonialidad del saber; gaélico irlandés,
Sounding Irish-Kurdish-Circassian Relationalities: Affirming Pluritopic, Imparative Methods
Postcolonial Interventions: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 2026, XI(2), 14–27.
Abstract
This article proposes a relational, pluritopic approach to coloniality through an interimperial reading of Irish, Kurdish, and Circassian histories of struggle. Drawing on decolonial thinking and oral epistemologies, it foregrounds the role of sonorous practices, including Irish-language song, Kurdish dengbêj performance, and Circassian dzeguako traditions, as epistemic practices of resistance. The article argues that dominant anti-colonial and anti-imperial narratives often obscure the experiences of communities whose histories do not align neatly with Eurocentric or statist frameworks, particularly those positioned ambiguously within or at the edges of Europe and West Asia. By tracing the circulation of colonial technologies, logics, and racial discourses across British and Russian imperial formations, the article develops an “imparative” methodological orientation that resists monolithic historiography and instead attends to interconnected, co-constituted histories of domination. Through this relational lens, the article demonstrates how colonial powers, despite apparent geopolitical opposition, collaboratively produce and refine techniques of control and erasure across different sites. In bringing these histories into dialogue, the article advances a pluriversal understanding of coloniality that centres the epistemic autonomy of subjugated communities and highlights the ongoing importance of oral and sonorous traditions in resisting historical erasure and sustaining decolonial horizons.
Keywords: Pluritopic, imparative hermeneutics; coloniality; Kurdish studies; Circassian genocide; Irish studies
The Darker Side of Jonathan Swift: On the Coloniality of Being in A Modest Proposal (1729)
Estudios Irlandeses, Special Issue 18.2, 2023, 11-27.
Abstract
This article reads A Modest Proposal from the darker side of the westernised/anglicised Enlightenment. Firstly, it critically engages with the proclivity within the Anglocentric academy to celebrate English language literary figures associated with “The Enlightenment” in Ireland without a questioning of their role in the colonial project and in shaping its discourses of racism and sexism. Secondly, it focuses on how, from an Irish decolonial perspective, Jonathan Swift can be understood as a manager of the colonial racial/patriarchal matrix of power. Thirdly, it argues that the satire written by Jonathan Swift should be understood as an Anglocentric geo-cultural category and may be understood as westernised/anglicised Enlightenment satire. Finally, A Modest Proposal is analysed in terms of the exceptionality principle of irony, Swift’s project of improvement and salvation of the colonised, and modernity/coloniality’s rhetorical promise yet inability to solve the problems it produces.