Essays

Alison has written for TIME, Aeon, The Conversation, the Irish Times and the Guardian, amongst others.

• ‘Brian Friel’s Translations: The ‘Boy-Girl School Romance’, Friel Reimagined website, 12 December 2022.
• ‘Using oral history to tell stories of Irish “mixed marriage”’, co-authored with Ruth Duffy, the Oral History Society blog, 27 July 2022.
• ‘Why a play about Ireland’s native language finds new resonance in Anglo-Irish relations today‘, The Conversation, 10 June 2022.
• ‘Derry Girls: the riotous show that shifted the experiences of teenage girls to centre stage‘, The Conversation, 25 May 2022.
• ‘Mixed Marriages in Irish Culture‘, co-authored with Ruth Duffy, The Honest Ulsterman, 25 February 2022.
• ‘The Complex History Behind Belfast—and Its Echoes in Present-Day Northern Ireland’, TIME, 12 November 2021. (For a Twitter thread with a list of sources consulted while writing this, please click here).
• ‘This is no love story: when England met Ireland‘, Aeon, 5 November 2021. (For a Twitter thread with a list of sources consulted while writing this, please click here).
• ‘An Interview with Mariah Garnett by Alison Garden’, The Tangerine 10, June 2021, 89–94.
• ‘Bridgerton and Normal People expose romance’s colonial hangover‘, Al Jazeera, 20 April 2021. (For a Twitter thread with a list of sources consulted while writing this, please click here).
• ‘Normal people: Kevin and Sadie’s teenage love story‘, RTÉ Brainstorm, 11 August 2020.
• ‘St Patrick’s Day parade homophobia protest: Paul Muldoon, Roger Casement and the AOH‘, The Irish Times, 14 March 2019.
• ‘Dangerous, always dangerous’: love and desire in Anna Burns’s Milkman‘, The Irish Times, 15 October 2018.
• ‘Black ’47: the cowboys of the western world‘, RTÉ Brainstorm, 14 September 2018.
• ‘Travelling Texts: Irish diaspora history, the North Atlantic and contemporary literature‘, Irish Diaspora Histories Network, 30 July 2018.
• ‘Remembering the Hunger Strikes in a Decade of Commemorations’, with Maggie Scull, Irish Times, 3 October 2016 (published in print and online).
• ‘GIS and literature: a report for the Irish Association of American Studies’, Irish Association for American Studies website, 13 September 2016.
• ‘“An extraordinary secretary bird”: writing, history and Roger Casement’, Irish Historians in Britain website, 26 March 2016.
• ‘Rethinking the 1980/1981 hunger strikes’, with Maggie Scull, Irish Times, 27 October 2015.
• ‘Fulbright Grants and Research Awards: Tips for Applicants’, MyAmericanStudies.com, 14 June 2015.
• ‘Students: don’t rate me on my appearance but on my teaching’, The Guardian, 21 April 2015.
• ‘Northern Ireland and the British Army: thinking about Yann Demange’s ’71 through a four nations approach’, Four Nations History Network, 2 March 2015.
• ‘How to Make the Most of your PhD’, The Guardian, 28 November 2014.