Rate My Professor Sonja Tiernan

Professor Sonja Tiernan served as the Eamon Cleary Professor of Irish Studies and Co-Director of the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies in the Division of Humanities at the University of Otago from 2019 to 2023. Originally from Dublin, she studied at University College Dublin, completing a Higher Diploma, Master's degree, and PhD in 2007. Prior to her appointment at Otago, Tiernan was Head of the Department of History and Politics at Liverpool Hope University in the United Kingdom. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, she has held visiting fellowships at the National Library of Ireland, Trinity College Dublin, the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the School of Irish Studies at Concordia University Canada, and the Moore Institute at the University of Galway. Her research has received funding from the Irish Research Council, the Royal Irish Academy, the National Endowment for the Humanities in the USA, and the Department of Foreign Affairs in Ireland. In recognition of her contributions, she received a research award in 2020.

Tiernan's research specializations lie in modern Irish history, with a focus on social and gender politics, including social reform movements, marriage equality, women's speeches, and commemoration. At Otago, she taught in the History programme and Gender Studies, offering courses on capital punishment in the British Empire and sexual politics in modern Ireland, and supervised postgraduate theses on topics such as hunger strikes during The Troubles and Irish feminist literature. She led a pioneering project mapping Irish communities and people of Irish heritage in Aotearoa New Zealand, funded by the Embassy of Ireland. Key publications include her monograph The History of Marriage Equality in Ireland (Manchester University Press, 2020); the best-selling anthology Irish Women’s Speeches: Voices that Rocked the System (University College Dublin Press, 2021); Irish Women’s Speeches Vol. II: A Rich Chorus of Voices (2022); the first biography Eva Gore-Booth: An Image of Such Politics (Manchester University Press, 2019); and edited The Political Writings of Eva Gore-Booth (Manchester University Press, 2016). Tiernan engaged the public through lectures, radio series like History Worth Repeating, and events including the Celtic Noir Crime Writing Festival. She now serves as a Research Associate of the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies and National Coordinator of the Irish Humanities Alliance at the Royal Irish Academy.