Dr Yvonne Whelan

BA, HDipEd(NUI, Dublin), PhD (NUI, Dublin)

Senior Lecturer

Contact

Office: 2.7N
Tel: +44 (0)117 928 9107
Fax: +44 (0)117 9287878
Email: yvonne.whelan@bristol.ac.uk

Research interests

I am a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography and joined the School of Geographical Sciences in 2005. Previously a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Ulster, I have also taught at the Department of Geography, University College Dublin. In 2008 I was the Armstrong Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto and the inaugural O'Brien Visiting Professor of Irish Studies at the Centre for Canadian-Irish Studies, Concordia University, Montrèal in 2004.

As a cultural and historical geographer I have spent much of the last ten years exploring the relationships between landscape, memory and identity in modern Ireland. Informed by scholarship in Geography, Cultural Heritage and Irish Studies I have been especially interested in exploring the symbolic dimensions of the urban landscape. My key publications in this area include a monograph, Reinventing Modern Dublin (Dublin: UCD Press, 2003), a co-edited volume, Heritage Memory and the Politics of Identity (Aldershot: Ashgate: 2007), and articles and essays in journals such as Environment and Planning, Irish Geography and The Journal of Historical Geography.

Throughout my academic career my research has also been attuned to, informed by and constituted in the field of Irish Studies, as evident in the the jointly-edited volumes Ireland: Space, Text Time (Dublin: Liffey, 2005) and Ireland Beyond Boundaries: Mapping Irish Studies in the Twenty-first Century (London: Pluto, 2007). More recently I was commissioned to co-author Sage's Key Concepts in Historical Geography, due to be published in 2010.

I am currently working on a monograph which examines the dynamic relationship between space, time, memory and ideology in shaping sites of cultural heritage. This extends my research on Ireland in a number of new thematic directions and will explore three key strands of inquiry: performative landscapes; landscapes of conflict; and Irish diasporic landscapes. In foregrounding the significance of the material landscape, this work advances a more nuanced interpretation of aspects of Ireland's past and present and argues that landscapes of Ireland provide much more than a passive backdrop for the representation of the past.

Selected publications

Whelan, YF. '`The Construction and Destruction of a Colonial Landscape: Monuments to British Monarchs in Dublin Before and After Independence?', in N.C. Fleming and Alan O'Day (Eds.), Ireland and Anglo-Irish Relations since 1800: Critical Essays, III, (pp. -), Ashgate, 2008. ISBN: 9780754627845

Whelan, YF & Harte, L. 'Placing Geography in Irish Studies: Symbolic Landscapes of Spectacle and Memory', in Liam Harte and Yvonne Whelan (Eds.), Ireland Beyond Boundaries: Mapping Irish Studies in the Twenty-First Century, (pp. 175-197), Pluto Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780745321851

Harte, L & Whelan, YF (Eds.). Ireland Beyond Boundaries: Mapping Irish Studies in the Twenty-First Century, Pluto Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780745321851

Graham, B & Whelan, YF. 'The legacies of the dead: commemorating the Troubles in Northern Ireland', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25 (3), (pp. 476-495), 2007. ISSN: 0263-7758 10.1068/d70j