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Biography

I am the Assistant Professor of Black Studies and am located in the Department of Sociology. I teach on the Trinity elective which introduces students to the epistemology of Black Studies as an intellectual pursuit. This is an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary field of knowledge that interrogates historical events that have impacted on those who are racialised as Black, while centring the perspectives of Black people in constructing and deconstructing these events. We also look at the knowledge production that comes from Black activists, academics, artists and storytellers. As we do this within an Irish university, I apply an Irish perspective to the critical race analysis, in addition to more common perspectives such as those coming from the US, UK, Africa, and other Black diasporan regions. This novel perspective is what makes our course so exciting and challenging. I also teach Gender and Race on the Sociology Department's M.Phil course, Race Ethnicity and Conflict. I co-Chair the Race, Ethnicity and Equality Working Group in College with the AVPEDI.

Research Tags

BLACK and MIXED RACE IRISH Irish Industrial Schools

Representations

Details	Date
Board Member of UNIDPAD 2014 -2024 (International Decade for People of African Descent), and Chair of UNIDPAD's Education subcommittee
Member of AFSAI (African Association of Scholars in Ireland)
Trustee and Company Secretary of AMRI (Association of Mixed-Race Irish)

Memberships

Membership of Professional Institutions, Associations, Societies

Details	Date From	Date To
Member of the British Sociological Association	2021	2023

Publications and other Research Outputs

Philomena Mullen, Defying the exclusionary homogeneity of Irish whiteness: mixed-race children in Irish industrial schools in the twentieth century, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 46, (7), 2022, Journal Article, PUBLISHED URL

Philomena Mullen, On Being Black, Irish and a Woman, Women's Studies Review, 6, 1999, Journal Article, PUBLISHED

Philomena Mullen, Black baby box[ed], Irish University Review, 50, (2), 2020, p252 - 255, Journal Article, PUBLISHED

Awards and Honours

Award	Date
IRC Government of Ireland Postgraduate scholar	2017

Research Interests

Description Of Research Interests

My field of research is twofold: 1) I research race and the racialised in Ireland, as well as the sociological and historical processes of Africans and those of African descent (like me) in Ireland pre-1990s and the Celtic Tiger period, and 2) as a survivor myself, I study the impact of being racialised, along with the intersectional factors of being institutionalised, classed and gendered within the institutional care system in Ireland of the 1940s-1980s. My approach is to apply an autoethnographic lens to these two research strands.

Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin

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Dr. Mary Philomena Mullen