Institute Staff
Professor John Wilson
Director and Professor of Communication
Email: j.wilson@ulster.ac.uk
Professor Wilson studied at the Ulster Polytechnic, The University of Nottingham, and Queen’s University Belfast, where he received his PhD in 1984. He has held various posts within the University including Dean of the Faculty of Social and Health Sciences of Education and Head of the School of Psychology and Communication. He has also held a number of visiting positions overseas including Professor of Communication at the University of Southern Illinois. His main research interest is in language in society, in particular political language. He has published a variety of journal articles in this area and a major text ‘Political Language’ (Blackwell:Oxford). Professor Wilson’s interests are eclectic, he has published work on a variety of topics including compliments in Arabic, discourse markers in education, to the acquisition of Belfast dialect. He was presently co-editor of the journal TEXT, an international journal of discourse. He has recently published two co-edited books, Discourse and Identity (2006, Ashgate: with Karen Stapleton), and Discourse of Europe (2007, John Benjamins: Sharon Millar). Both books contain original chapters on Ulster Scots identity.
Mrs Sally Halliday
Research Assistant
Email: sp.halliday@ulster.ac.uk
Mrs Sally Halliday has been employed for several years on a part-time basis in the School of History and International Affairs as a lecturer in history, teaching on the Irish History and Politics degree and the International Relations. Courses taught include 'Irish Communities Aboard', 'Catholic Community in 18th Century Ireland', 'Irish Government and Politics' and 'Political Theories and Ideologies'. Mrs Halliday has also delivered courses within the History degree programme at Coleraine on 'Study Skills' and the 'Use of Computers in the Study of History'. Mrs Halliday has also been involved in delivering history courses to a community group, 'Women into Irish History' a cross community group based in the Waterside area of Londonderry.
Dr Johanne Devlin Trew
Research Associate
Email: jd.trew@ulster.ac.uk
Dr Devlin Trew was a Research Fellow (since 2004) at Queen's University Belfast, School of History and Anthropology, where she was awarded (along with Prof. Liam Kennedy) a major research grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for her work on contemporary Ulster Migration. From 2002-2004 she was a lecturer and Research Fellow at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Dept. of Folklore, and from 2000-2001 she was invited Assistant Professor in the programme for Canadian Irish Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Dr. Devlin Trew has particular interest in twentieth-century migration and the use of qualitative methodologies in migration research.
Dr Frank Ferguson
Research Associate
Email: f.ferguson@ulster.ac.uk
Dr Frank Ferguson completed his A.H.R.B. funded doctorate at Queen's University, Belfast in 2002. His PhD topic was ‘Thomas Percy: Literary Antiquarianism as National Aesthetic'. Dr. Ferguson has compilied and edited The Anthology of Ulster-Scots Literature, published by Four Courts Press (Dublin) in 2006. His research interests include eighteenth and nineteenth century British and Irish poetry, particularly the use of literature in the construction of national and cultural identity. He is also presented a number of conference papers, the most recent at the Queen's Centre for Eighteenth Studies Archival conference in 2004. Dr. Ferguson is currently developing his thesis and post-doctoral research into a monograph and a series of articles.
Mr Martin Hay
Research Assistant
Email: martinhay33@hotmail.com
Mr Martin Hay graduated from the University of Ulster in 1998 with an honours degree in Sociology and from University College Cork with a MA in sociology in 1999. At present, he is completing his doctoral thesis at the University of Ulster. His doctoral topic is an analysis of Ulster Scots ideology and identity. His current research is an analysis of media perceptions of the Ulster Scots movement. Mr. Hay is currently preparing a paper for publication on the (re) emergence of an Ulster Scots ideology and identity during the Home Rule crisis.
Mrs Heather Walker
Research Assistant
Email: heather_gmyc@fs.mail.net
Ms Heather Walker studied Linguistic Science at the University of Ulster, Jordanstown, where she obtained a first class honours degree (2000) and is currently working toward a PhD in Linguistics and Communication, focusing on the Rhetorical Strategies of Ferdinand de Saussure. Her primary research interests are in the areas of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, the study of rhetoric and metaphor, and the linguistic construction of culture and identity. She presented a paper based on her doctoral research at an international conference in Hangzhou, China in 2004. She currently works part-time as an assistant lecturer in the School of Communication (Jordanstown), and part-time as a researcher at the Institute of Ulster Scots Studies. At present, she is working on a study of the linguistic construction of the Ulster-Scot identity at various historical moments.
Mrs Sinead Grant
Secretary
Email: s.grant@ulster.ac.uk
Mrs Grant graduated from the University of Ulster, Magee Campus with BA (Hons) Business Studies. She also completed a combined 'A' Level Language and Secretarial course at the North West Institute of Further and Higher Education. Sinead has previously worked for Derry Northside Development Trust, Off the Streets Initiative, Fruit of the Loom and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive.
Adjunct Staff
Dr W P Kelly
Email: bp.kelly@ulster.ac.uk
Dr Kelly lectures in Ulster and Scottish studies, his primary research interests are in seventeenth century Irish and British history. His PhD topic was ‘The early career of James Butler, twelfth earl and first duke of Ormond, 1610-1688. Publications include articles for History Ireland and Journal of the Butler Society, and ‘The Earl of Ormond, the Irish government and the Bishops’ Wars, 1638-40’, in Young, J. (ed.) Celtic dimensions of the British Civil Wars, (Glasgow, 1997), 'Colonel John Barry, the Irish Confederacy and the Earl of Ormond,' in O'Siochru, M., Kingdoms in Crisis: Ireland in the 1640's, (2001). He has most recently edited The Sieges of Derry, (Dublin 2001). Dr. Kelly has recently published Sir Henry Docwra's Narration of the English expedition to Lough Foyle in 1600.
Ms Marie-Claire Harrigan
Email: mcharrigan@hotmail.co.uk
Ms Harrigan is currently completing a doctoral thesis entitled 'Use and Misuse of the 1641 Depositions' which is an analysis of the historical, historiographical and contemporary use of the deposition evidence. She holds a first class honours degree in Irish History and Politics from the University of Ulster, Magee where she has also taught undergraduate courses in History and Politics. She previously worked as a research assistant and editor on the Commentarius Rinuccinianus project, a joint research venture funded by DAST, the IMC and UU which will be housed on the UU website following online publication. She is also currently a co-editor, along with Dr Eamonn O'Ciardha (UU) and Dr David Finnegan (Goldsmith's, London), of the forthcoming Flight of the Earls publication produced as a result of the IUSS sponsored Flight of the Earls conference, August 2007. Her interests include sixteenth and seventeenth century Irish and British history, and also contemporary Northern Irish politics.
Professor Richard Davis
Email:Richard.Davis@utas.edu.au
Professor Richard P. Davis, a graduate of the Universities of Dublin and Otago, is an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Tasmania and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. He holds a Higher Diploma of Education from the University of Dublin (1960), and has over twenty-five years teaching experience. He is author of Arthur Griffith and Non-Violent Sinn Fein; Irish Issues in New Zealand Politics, 1868-1920; The Young Ireland Movement; Mirror Hate; the Convergent Ideology of Northern Ireland Paramilitaries; Irish Traces on Tasmania History, 1803-2004; Revolutionary Imperialist: William Smith O'Brien, 1803-1864; (chief editor) 'to Solitude Consigned': The Tasmania Journal of William Smith O'Brien, 1849-1853; Open to Talent; the Centenary History if the University of Tasmania, 1890-1990; Eighty Years Labour: The ALP in Tasmania, 1902-1983; with Marianne Davis, Ulster Enterprise and Public Service in New Zealand and Victoria: JSM Thompson and GV Shannon: and The Rebel in his Family: Selected Papers of William Smith O'Brien.
Mr Alister Mc Reynolds
Email:a.mcreynolds@ulster.ac.uk
Mr Alister Mc Reynolds joined the IUSS in 2007 as an Honorary Fellow having been a teacher for over 30 years in the Secondary and further Education sectors with 14 of those years being spent as a Principal. His immediate target area was Educational Outreach on behalf of the IUSS. Mr Mc Reynolds organised and taught on the Ulster and Scottish Studies Introductory Course, which ran very successfully in Ballymoney. This was quickly followed by the same course in Bushmills where it ran in conjunction with Bushmills Ulster Scots Heritage Society. In March 2008 Mr Mc Reynolds was Keynote Speaker at the American Conference for Irish Studies in Savannah Georgia. His most recent work focussed on the MeLellan family who originated in Ballymoney and became Shipbuilders in Maine. This family and others will feature in the address, which he is due to give at the XVII Ulster American Heritage Symposium in June 2008 at the Centre for Migration Studies in Omagh. Mr Mc Reynolds is also due to launch a book in Autumn 2008, 'From Generation to Generation’, which looks at the developmental impact of the Scots Irish Diaspora.
Professor Don MacRaild
Email: don.macraild@northumbria.ac.uk
Professor MacRaild is currently with the School of Arts and Social Sciences in Northumbria University. Prior to this he was Professor of History at the University of Ulster, having previously held the chair of History at Victoria University of Wellington. He has produced nine books or pamphlets and numerous articles and chapters. His most recent books are a study of Orangeism in Victorian England and an Irish Economic and Social History Society pamphlet on the Irish in Britain. Don MacRaild has several overlapping fields of research expertise, including: the Irish in Britain and the wider British World; the history of the Orange Order outside Ireland; the history of labour and social organization; and ethnicity and ethnic conflict in the nineteenth century. His research on Orangeism, migration and Irish communities abroad dovetails neatly with the wok of IUSS and he is a regular participant in the Institute's events. Don is a member of the IUSS management board.
International Research Network Staff
Dr Lyndon Fraser
Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Email: lyndon.fraser@canterbury.ac.nz
Lydon Fraser's research interests include the Irish Diaspora, the Irish in New Zealand, ethnicity and international migration. He has recently co-edited two books A Distant shore: Irish Migration and New Zealand Settlement (2000) and Shifting Centres: Women and Migration in New Zealand history (2002). He was appointed to the position of Senior Lecturer in 2000.
Professor Richard Ely
Ulster Scots Research in Australia
Email: r.g.ely@utas.edu.au
Professor Richard Ely is involved in a project which inspects and reports on theses researched in Australian universities on, or relating to, the subject of Ulster Scots in Australia. The situation in respect to Australian historical research on Irish emigration to in Australia is that there is a great deal of it. In respect to emigrants from the nine countries of Ulster there is a significantly smaller but still respectable amount published. In respect to Ulster Scots emigrants in Australia, designated as such, very little has been published about those who can be described as Ulster Scots, this subject has not attracted significant interest. While Scottishness as an ethnic or cultural category has commanded fair interest by Australian historians, Ulster Scottishness has usually been noticed only as an ethnic-cultural variant or fragment of Scottishness, or a religio-cultural variant of Protestantism. Given that overall historiographical situation in the area of published research, the main question to be looked at in this project is: How far and in what terms, in Australian thesis research, can Ulster Scots emigrants to Australia, who can be identified as such, be usefully studied by reference to that background.
Dr Kevin James
University of Guelph Ontario
Email: kjames@uoguelph.ca
Dr James is a history lecturer at the University of Guelph. His current research focuses on textile labour in Scotland and Ulster, firms that operated in the shirt industry on both sides of the Irish Sea, and Scottish anti-sweating campaigns aimed at Irish labour. The Strong links that have been forged between the University of Guelph and the University of Ulster have given life to curricular innovation in the Scottish Studies Programme, and have fostered new research on historical and contemporary interactions between Scotland, Ulster and Canada. The cluster of researchers studying these themes at the University of Guelph has benefited from frequent contact with colleagues in Scotland, Ulster and elsewhere. Dr. James recognises the Institute of Ulster Scots Studies as the centre of this expanding international research network.
Professor David A. Wilson
Celtic Studies St. Michael's College, University of Toronto
Email: david.wilson@utoronto.ca
Professor Wilson is the co-ordinator the Celtic Studies programme at St. Michael's College. He is editing a book with Mark G. Spencer ‘Ulster Presbyterianism in the Atlantic World: Religion, Politics and Identity' to be published by the Four Courts Press, Dublin in 2005. Professor Wilson organised a conference on the Orange Order in Canada held in July 2005, the proceedings of which was published by Four Courts Press, Dublin in 2006. Other research interests include Thomas D'Arcy McGee and the Fenians in Canada.
Professor Peter M. Toner
Email: toner@unbsj.ca
Peter M. Toner is Professor in the Department of History and Politics, University of New Brunswick, Saint John, and a participant in the Atlantic ARC partnership with the University of Ulster. He is the author of significant work on Irish and Ulster settlement in New Brunswick and Atlantic Canada, including An Index to Irish Immigrants in the New Brunswick Census of 1851 and editor of New Ireland Remembered: Historical Essays on the Irish in New Brunswick.
Professor Brad Patterson
Director of the Irish-Scottish Studies Programme Stout Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Email: brad.patterson@vuw.ac.nz
Professor Patterson's research interests are the Irish and Scottish Diasporas. Recent publications include an edited volume Sport, Society and Culture in New Zealand (1999) and The Irish in New Zealand: Historical Contexts and Perspectives (2002). In 2004, he edited From Ulster to New Ulster, a series of lectures given by New Zealand speakers, Professor Malcolm Campbell from Auckland and Dr Melanie Nolan from Victoria, during the Institute of Ulster Scots Studies New Zealand week in Northern Ireland. Future publications in 2005 include, Ulster/New Zealand migration and transfers, and on the state of Irish-Scottish Studies in Australia and New Zealand.
Professor Anita Puckett
Assistant Professor of Appalachian Studies Virginia Tech
Email: apuckett@vt.edu
Professor Puckett is director of the Appalachian Studies Programme in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies. In addition, she is director of the Centre for Ulster Migration, Cultures and Societies, a research centre supported in part by the Institute of Ulster Scots Studies, University of Ulster. Professor Puckett is currently researching how ethnonyms, that is, the names for ethnic groups, can function almost as material objects of exchange and inheritance among those identifying as Scots-Irish and Melungeon. She is also conducting an historical ethnography of language project to examine how Ulster Scots ethnicity impacted social stratification among late eighteenth century settlers of Virginian New River Valley.
Dr Jason C. White
PhD Postdoctoral Fellow in Scottish and Ulster Studies University of Guelph
Dr White's research focuses on the impact of the Thirty Year's War on domestic politics in the three Stuart Kingdoms. During the early Stuart period the international Protestant cause period the international Protestant cause periodically interacted with domestic political issues in a cyclical fashion. Dr. White's research places the politics of the Protestant cause in the contexts of both late Elizabethan foreign policy and the union of crowns. Dr. White intends to conduct research on Ireland, especially Ulster, in order to make his work more thoroughly Archipelago.
Dr John Sherry
PhD Postdoctoral Fellow in Scottish and Ulster Studies University of Guelph
As a PhD student within the Institute of Ulster Scots Studies, Dr Sherry successfully completed his doctoral thesis in August 2009 entitled ‘Scottish Commercial and Political Networks in Ulster during the Reigns of King William III and Queen Anne, 1688-1714’. Since September 2009, he has been employed jointly by the IUSS and the University of Guelph as a post-doctoral fellow in the history of Ulster and Scotland. Whilst teaching undergraduate courses such as the Celtic Britain and Ireland since 1600 and the Reformation, he also conducts research into the commercial and migratory links between Scotland, Ulster and the Atlantic world 1603-1746.
Mr Gerard Horn
PhD student in Victoria University Wellington, sponsored research by the Institute of Ulster-Scots Studies
Mr Horn's research focuses on the Folk of enterprise and public service: Irish Protestant Migrants in New Zealand 1850-1930. The primary area of researching during the period has been on the economic lives of these migrants in New Zealand. A second area of research has been the Orange Institution in the Colony. In an effort to address the role that the Institution played in the development of an Irish Protestant Diasporic community in New Zealand, Mr Horn has complied a database of 200 Orangemen from obituaries, death notices, and funeral reports, which have then been matched to a variety of other sources to examine their socio-economic, religious and cultural background.