This blogpost is republished with the kind permission of An Clogán Journal. Please consider a subscription to this new print and online magazine of politics and culture at https://www.anclogan.ie/ In 2016, I took up a job working in the Oireachtas. On my first day in my new job, I learnt that the colour of Official … Read more
It is no understatement that AI chatbots have become a part of daily life for many people, at least since OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022. But, as is so often the case, as exciting new technologies become available, they can also introduce new forms of gender-based violence. As has been seen with deepfake generation technology … Read more
There are many striking moments in Testimony, the recently-released documentary from director Aoife Moore, that centres the voices and experiences of people affected by Ireland’s systems of institutionalisation and forced family separation. The testimony from women who spent years imprisoned and working for nothing in Magdalene Laundries or who were forced to give up their … Read more
Fine Gael Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll-MacNeill spoke in the Dáil on December 3rd on the subject of transphobia, which she definitively and outspokenly condemned. Responding to a motion put forward by Labour TD Marie Sherlock on trans healthcare, the Minister stated: The sheer nonsense of it, we all know that. That a man was … Read more
Doing the Feminist Legal Work: Early careers, activism and research funding We invite you to attend a forthcoming online seminar on 16 February 2026 from 1pm – 3pm hosted by Dr Sarah Craig (Ulster University) and Dr Katie Nolan (TU Dublin) on behalf of the Doing Feminist Legal Work Network. Entitled ‘Doing the Feminist Legal Work: Early careers, activism and research … Read more
This blog is adapted from my shorter response to Gerry Whyte’s keynote at the recent excellent conference on Public Interest Litigation and Access to Justice at the University of Galway. Preparing to participate in that conference, I was surprised to find that legal academics have written very little about neoliberalism and legal culture in the … Read more
One of the first hurdles in discussing “1325” is explaining which 1325 you mean. In its narrowest sense, 1325 refers to the text of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, adopted on October 31, 2000. But anyone working in this field knows that “1325” has come to encompass far more in … Read more
The most pronounced critique directed at the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) Women, Peace and Security agenda (WPS) over its 25-year trajectory has been directed at its singling out of sexual violence for specific attention. Through five distinctive resolutions that focus specifically on sexual violence, gender has been placed at a distance from how the … Read more
In her recent piece for The Morrigan, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin argues that prioritisation of sexual violence as a target of the the mainstream WPS Agenda means that reproductive violence is often overlooked. Under this Agenda, reproductive violence is essentially understood as a sub-category of sexual violence. Of course, sexual and reproductive violence are often connected, … Read more
In recent years, attacks on maternity hospitals, fertility clinics, and women’s medical centers in sites of armed conflict are visible and undulating. In parallel, the structural violence of deliberate starvation, water deprivation, desalination destruction, and sewage pollution from military targeting harms mothers. This can be most particularly observed in Gaza, but it is also present … Read more