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Dr Helen O'Connell
Contact Dr Helen O'Connell (email at helen.o'connell@durham.ac.uk)
Helen O'Connell's research interests lie in the fields of Irish literature and culture. She is particularly interested in dietary discourse and the significance of commodities such as tea in Ireland from the late 1700s through to the Irish Revival. She is currently working on an AHRC-funded project, Tea in Ireland, 1789-1845.
Her work to date has focused on 'improvement' (principally in the form of fictional pamphlets and instructional manuals) and literary culture in Ireland from the Romantic period through to the Irish Revival. She is the author of Ireland and the Fiction of Improvement (Oxford University Press, 2006).
Forthcoming articles explore the anxiety surrounding tea consumption and diet in the early nineteenth century and the fiction of James Joyce.
She is happy to supervise prospective post-graduates in the areas of food studies and/or Irish writing in the modern period.
Research Groups
Department of English Studies
Selected Publications
Books: authored
- (2006). Ireland and the Fiction of Improvement. Oxford University Press.
Books: sections
- O'Connell, Helen (2013). Food Values: Joyce and Dietary Revival in Ireland'. In James Joyce in the Nineteenth Century. Nash, John. Cambridge University Press.
- O'Connell, Helen (2010). 'Reconciliation and Emancipation: The Banims and Carleton'. In Blackwell Companion to Irish Writing. Wright, Julia Oxford: Blackwell. vol. 1: 411-426.
Journal papers: academic
- O'Connell, Helen (2013). "'At Our Potatoes": Recipes for Normality in Ireland'. Eire-Ireland Fall/Winter.
- O'Connell, Helen (2012). '"A Raking Pot of Tea": Consumption and Excess in Early Nineteenth-Century Ireland'. Literature and History 21(2): 32-47.