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Researcher Highlight: Sinèad Moynihan

Routes is currently highlighting the diverse work conducted by our members on issues of migration, mobility and displacement. Here we feature an update from Professor Sinèad Moynihan on her current research project ‘Brian Moore at 100’. 

I am currently co-investigator of Brian Moore at 100, generously funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (2020-22). Designed to coincide with the centenary of his birth in 2021, this project seeks to critically appraise, and thus revive scholarly and public interest in, the work of neglected and important Belfast-born writer, Brian Moore (1921-1999). The author of twenty-six novels in diverse genres and a transnational subject who lived most of his adult life in Canada and the US, Moore’s literary career invites re-examination in the context of the emergence of a number of scholarly trends in the two decades since his death: the rise of migration and diaspora studies, particularly in an Irish Studies context; democratising trends that would now regard Moore’s “pulp” novels as an essential (rather than an anomalous) part of his oeuvre; adaptation studies (several of Moore’s works were adapted for the screen); the “material turn” in literary studies, which places greater emphasis on unpublished writings and archival materials; the increasing emphasis on the importance of coteries and networks in the production of literary texts, rather than the individual “genius” of a given writer; the politics of prize-giving and the literary marketplace. The Small Research Grant is being used to fund a collaborative programme of research, culminating in a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies devoted to Moore’s work. To learn more about the project, please see the project website or its Twitter page, @brianmoore100 

Date: 24 September 2020

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