Biography
Dr Tina O'Toole is an associate professor at the School of English, Irish, and Communication, University of Limerick. Her scholarship focuses on British and Irish Literature; she is an expert on Irish women's writing of the late nineteenth / early twentieth centuries, and on gender and sexuality studies. She has held research fellowships at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library (UCLA), the W. B. Yeats Chair of Irish Studies (University of São Paulo), the Centre for Irish Studies at Queen's University Belfast, the Women in Irish Society Project (University College Cork, as part of a three-year PRTLI-funded initiative), and the Centre for Feminist & Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa.To date, she has published two monographs and four edited collections including The Irish New Woman (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Reading Gender and Space: Essays for Patricia Coughlan (Cork University Press, 2023; co-edited with Anne Fogarty). As guest editor, she has produced three journal special issues including one on Elizabeth Bowen (Irish University Review 2021, co-edited with Anna Teekell) and a multidisciplinary issue of Éire-Ireland on 'New Approaches to Irish Migration' (2012, co-edited with Piaras Mac Éinrí). She has published chapters in peer-reviewed scholarly collections including The Irish Revival: A Complex Vision (Syracuse UP, 2023), Irish Literature in Transition 1880-1940 (Cambridge UP, 2020), A History of Irish Women's Writing (Cambridge UP, 2018), and Reconnecting Aestheticism and Modernism (Routledge, 2017), and articles in journals including Modernism/modernity, Études Irlandaises, Irish University Review, and New Hibernia Review.
As a lecturer and module leader, her course material addresses twentieth-century and contemporary Irish Literature; she offers a postgraduate module on Gender & Sexuality in Irish Writing on the MA English. In 2016, she won the University of Limerick Excellence in Teaching Award. In 2022, she was lead organiser for the annual conference of IASIL (International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, the main professional association in our field), hosted by the University of Limerick.
She served as an elected board member of the Royal Irish Academy Committee for Literatures in English (2009-2013) and as an executive member of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (2013-2017); she was IASIL Treasurer for four years, and served as an editorial board member of the Irish University Review (Edinburgh University Press) during the same period. At the University of Limerick, she was appointed Assistant Dean (Academic Affairs) at the Faculty of Arts, Humanities & Social Science (2005-2008); she was Head of English (2006-2009 and again from 2014-2017), and served as Course Director for the BA New Media & English (2009-2012), the BA English & History (2014-2015), and the MA English (2016-2020).
Research Interests
Feminist, queer, social, and anticolonial representations in Irish literature and culture. Concentrating on late-nineteenth and twentieth-century Ireland, my scholarship focuses on frequently-occluded Irish writers, voices, and community activism, and I welcome doctoral research proposals on such subjects. My research consistently address Irish feminist and queer Irish interventions from my first publication, a book chapter for a Canadian scholarly edition titled 'Moving into the Spaces Cleared by Our Sisters: Lesbian Community Activism in Ireland and Canada' (Sumach Press, 2003) to more publications on writers including George Egerton, Rosamond Jacob, Kate O'Brien, and Elizabeth Bowen.Professional Activities
Employment
- 2016 University of Limerick - Senior Lecturer
- 2009 University of Limerick - Lecturer
- 2005 University of Limerick - Junior Lecturer
- 2004 University of Limerick - Teaching Assistant
- 2003 Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's Belfast - Research Fellow in Irish Studies
- 2002 IRCHSS at NUI Cork - IRCHSS Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
- 1999 HEA (PRTLI 1) at NUI Cork - Project Researcher
- 1999 HEA (PRTLI 1) at NUI Cork - Project Researcher
Award
- 2016 - University Teaching Award
Education
- 2001 NUI - PhD
- 1993 UCD - M A
- 1991 UCD - BA
Association
- Executive Member, International Association for the Study of Irish Literature
- Member, Society for the Study of Nineteenth Century Ireland
- , European Society for the Study of English
- , American Conference for Irish Studies
- Editorial board member, European Journal of English Studies
- Member, NUIG-UL Gender ARC
- External board member, GREP on Gender, Culture and Identity (UCD, QUB, UL)