Ciara McAllister

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Dr Ciara McAllister specialises in 20^th and 21^st Century Irish literature and drama. Her research centres on representations of the working class, gender, and violence in the North of Ireland, with particular reference to the Troubles, post-conflict recovery and violence against women and girls.

At Notre Dame, Ciara is finishing her book project, Writing the Working Class and the Troubles in the North of Ireland (Routledge, forthcoming 2027). This monograph assesses the role that class has played in both the literary and dramatic construction of the Troubles (1969-1998). Through its attention to issues of form, audience and authorship, as well as the intracategorical complexity of the working class, the monograph argues that reductive representations of working-class communities serve an ideological purpose, and that the capacity to challenge dominant narratives is often contained by the literary mode of production. The analysis is underpinned by readings of space and place, with the urban centres of Belfast and Derry examined in addition to working-class neighbourhoods and homes, and considerable attention is given to the location of the writer and the real or imagined audience. Drawing upon a range of theoretical paradigms and schools of thought – particularly Marxism, feminism, intersectionality, postcolonialism – the book compares a broad selection of representative texts and develops a fuller understanding of the complexities of class in the North of Ireland.

In addition, Ciara is preparing a second book, provisionally titled Community Theatre, the Working Class and the Irish Peace Process, examining the role that this artform played in giving voice to working-class communities in the 1990s.

Before coming to Notre Dame, Ciara was a Government of Ireland postdoctoral research fellow in drama and theatre studies at the University of Galway. Prior to this, she was Development Officer for Future Screens NI, co-ordinating training and mentoring for the creative industries in the North of Ireland. From 2024-2025, Ciara lectured at the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast, where she convened modules on post-conflict theatre, Northern Irish literature and culture, and fiction and the novel in the long 18^th century. She has further teaching credits in modules on contemporary fiction, introduction to English Literary Studies, gender studies and Irish culture.

Ciara’s PhD, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, was awarded by Queen’s University Belfast, and she holds an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature from University College Dublin.

Alongside her research, Ciara is a Prizes Officer for the Irish Society of Theatre Research (ISTR), and a writer, facilitator and project lead for Front and Centre NI, an organisation designed to promote new writing from female and non-binary playwrights. She founded and produced the QUB Voices podcast during the Covid-19 pandemic and has consulted on the development of a number of plays centring on domestic violence and harassment.