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Research Fellows

 

Research Fellows

Briony Widdis headshot
Dr Briony Widdis is an anthropologist at Queen’s University Belfast, specialising in the legacies of colonialism and the British Empire in Ireland and Northern Ireland, focusing on their representation in historic houses, museums, and archives. She has held roles in several cultural institutions, including as Curator of Ethnography at National Museums Scotland, Assistant Director of the Northern Ireland Museums Council, Culture and Arts Manager at Belfast City Council and Eighteenth Century Specialist at the UK National Archives. Currently, Dr Widdis is working on the AHRC project, Historic Houses, Global Crossroads and is co-editing the forthcoming Routledge volume Museums, Empire, Colonialism: Identities, Memory and Legacies in Ireland. She is Editor of Museum Ireland, the annual journal of the Irish Museums Association.
Hiroki Shin Headshot  
Olivia Dee Headshot Olivia Dee is an oral historian of gender, women and reproductive rights. She is now a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queens University Belfast. She has produced research on oral history, mother and baby institutions, abortion, and the legal reform of reproductive rights in the UK. Her fellowship examines Northern Irish women’s experiences of unmarried pregnancy, including gestation, labour, motherhood, mother and baby homes, postnatal care, abortion, adoption, and miscarriage. This project will utilise oral history to analyse women’s experiences of unmarried pregnancy itself, as well as the long-lasting effects of the stigma and trauma that often followed.
Maurice J Casey Headshot Maurice J Casey is a Research Fellow at HAPP, working on the AHRC-funded project Queer Northern Ireland: Sexuality before Liberation. Maurice’s research at QUB focuses on histories of sexuality in early 20th century Ulster. He also has a research expertise in the history of international communism, in addition to wide-ranging experience in public history. His two exhibitions, Out in the World: Ireland’s LGBTQ+ Diaspora and Revolutionary Routes: Ireland and the Black Atlantic, opened at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin in 2021 and 2022 respectively. Additionally, Maurice has contributed as a researcher and interviewee for historical podcasts, radio and TV. His current book project is a narrative history of an unusual hotel in interwar Moscow, the Hotel Lux.