Catherine Wilsdon is a Research Associate at UCD's Humanities Institute and currently lectures in Carlow College and IES Abroad. She was recently awarded a PhD in English Literature from University College Dublin. Her thesis explored the European travels, encounters and experiences of the Irish playwright and travel writer John Millington Synge.
The Liam Swords bursary enabled her to spend time in Paris retracing Synge's steps and building upon her doctoral research. Synge spent several winters studying in the French capital where he encountered various groups, individuals, and ideas that would help to shape his literary aesthetic. His connections to a small group of Irish nationalists based in Paris are of particular interest to Dr Wilsdon and will be the primary emphasis of her lecture. To this end, the Irish College provided her with access to materials related to the Irish community in Paris that are unavailable in Ireland. Wilsdon is currently preparing a monograph that argues the importance of Synge’s European travels to the development of his literary aesthetic. The work will map an unfamiliar context of a canonical Irish literary figure thereby illuminating Franco-Irish cultural connections and drawing attention to the multiple geographies of modernist literature.
