Academic Staff at the CSWE

The N.U.I. Maynooth Centre for the Study of Wider Europe is an interdisciplinary centre whose Academic staff come from a variety of disciplines and departments. The Centre's Academic staff are listed below, along with some basic information including their department and research interests. For a more in-depth profile click through to the person's profile page on widereurope.ie.

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  Dr. John O’ Brennan

  Department:Sociology
  Position: Lecturer in European Politics and Society
  Research Interests: EU enlargement, EU integration, Western Balkans, EU influence on democracy promotion, geopolitical relations,European Neighbourhood Policy, ESDP, Ireland and the EU, Ireland and the Lisbon Treaty
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  Dr. Christian Noack

  Department:History
  Position:Director of the CSWE, Lecturer in East European History
  Research Interests: Imperial and Soviet Russia, the history of mass tourism in the Soviet Union, the history of Islam in Central and Soviet Asia
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  Prof. Dennis Pringle

  Department:Geography
  Position:Senior Lecturer in Geography
  Research Interests: emerging infectious diseases, boundary disputes in Eastern Europe, health and social inequalities in Europe and beyond
• 

  Prof. Richard Vincent Comerford

  Department:History
  Position:Professor of History, Head of Department
  Research Interests: Political mobilisation in Ireland and Europe and its social and cultural bases; confessionalism; the politics of culture and ethnicity in Europe
• 

  Prof. Sean Ó Riain

  Department:Sociology
  Position:Professor of Sociology, Head of Department
  Research Interests: the politics of economic development and social inequality in Europe and the wider world
• 

  Dr. Adam Drazin

  Department:Anthropology
  Position:Lecturer in Anthropology
  Research Interests: the material culture of uncertainty, the changing domestic and national culture of Romania, Irish-Romanian homes, technologies for independent living

• Dr. Aphra Kerr

  Department:Sociology
  Position:Lecturer in Sociology
  Research Interests: the production and consumption of media in the European and global context with a particular focus on new media including the internet and digital games; Media representations of minority groups in Ireland; Polish migration patterns

• Dr. Darragh Farrell

  Department:Sociology
  Research Interests: Participatory democracy in the Republika Srpska, international political theory, cultures of Bosnia & Herzegovina and the wider Balkans, role of popular music and sport in contemporary society.
• 

  Dr. Patty A. Gray

  Department:Anthropology
  Position:Lecturer in Anthropology
  Research Interests: Russian Far East, Eastern Europe, social theory and critical ethnography, international development projects, humanitarian aid andcharity, Northern indigenous peoples, Russia\'s emergence as an international aid donor

• Dr. Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’ Riain

  Department:Sociology
  Position:Senior Lecturer in Sociology
  Research Interests: the impact of new transnational communities on the racialized definitions of irishness; Ethnicity and Race in Ireland and Europe; Polish immigrants in Ireland; trans-European migration patterns
• 

  Dr Angela Byrne

  Department:History
  Position:NUI Graduate
  Research Interests: Irish Russian relations in the 18th Century, history of maps and mapping, Russian culture in the Enlightenment, 18th Century travel writing

• Aisling Regan

  Department:Sociology
  Position:M. Litt Candidate
  Research Interests: European foreign and security policy, conflict in the Balkans since the 1990s, international involvement in Kosovo and the gender integration in the military.
• 

  David Jo Murphy

  Department:Anthropology
  Position:PhD candidate, NUI Maynooth John Hume Scholar
  Research Interests: styles, codes and rituals of a Pan-Slavic music scene;youth subcultures (in particular, those possessing oppositional neo-tribal quasi-political affiliations), contemporary ethnicity, the anthropology of social thought, and the so-called ‘modern primitive’ movement.

• Pól O Beaglaóich

  Department:Anthropology
  Position:CREOLE, European Anthropology Masters
  Research Interests: Political anthropology, the project of European integration and the Western Balkans region. My Masters thesis revolves around a comparative study of the Bosnian Serbs and the Northern Ireland Unionists as the frontier peoples of empire.
• 

  Seamus Coll

  Department:History
  Position:PhD candidate, IRCHSS Government of Ireland Scholar
  Research Interests: Political ideologies, relationship between communism and nationalism in the emerging Soviet Union, specifically Mirsaid Sultangaliev.

• Stephan Vormann

  Department:Sociology
  Position:PhD Candidate
  Research Interests: European Union foreign and security policy; EU policy toward the Balkans; the Balkan Wars of the 1990s and the new security architecture.
• 

  Zsuzsanna Zarka

  Department:History
  Position:PhD candidate, Administrative Coordinator CSWE
  Research Interests: Irish perceptions of Hungary and Austria-Hungary, the role of Empires in history, 20th Century Hungarian history.