Voices from the Irish Digital Humanities Community
DARIAH-IE ECR Bursary Awardees talk about their research.
We’re excited to present this special four-part blog series featuring insights from DARIAH-IE’s 2025 Early Career Researcher Bursary awardees.
DARIAH-IE was delighted to be able to support four Early Career Researchers to attend the DARIAH Annual Event, which took place in Göttingen, Germany in June 2025. The event was attended by 270 participants from across Europe, with numerous presentations, plus posters, over the course of the 3 days. As well as attending the event and benefiting from the networking and learning it offered, the awardees were given the opportunity to provide a short blog about their own work to share with fellow Irish Digital Humanities researchers on the DARIAH-IE website. These blog posts will be published fortnightly from September 11th.
The successful awardees are listed below, along with a brief bio, and the expected date of their blog publication.
Rachel McCarthy, PhD Researcher, University College Cork (CASCADE).
Rachel is a PhD researcher at University College Cork, where she previously earned a bachelor’s degree in ‘Digital Humanities and Information Technology’. After completing a master’s degree in ‘Digital Text Analysis’ at the University of Antwerp, she now focuses on computational literary studies. Her research involves using techniques such as stylometry, natural language processing, and language models to investigate authorship attribution and writing styles, and to track semantic changes in texts beyond traditional reading methods. Passionate about advancing text analysis, she aims to uncover new insights into literary and historical texts using digital methodologies.
Dr Caitlin Burge, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Galway (STEMMA)
Blog Post: September 25th, 2025
Caitlin (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Researcher with the ERC-project ‘STEMMA: Systems of Transmitting Early Modern Manuscript Verse, 1475-1700’, at the University of Galway, using quantitative and computational approaches to identify instances of ‘rolling archetypes’ and their evolution. Having completed her AHRC-funded PhD at Queen Mary, University of London in 2022, she is currently working on her first monograph using network analysis to consider the career of Thomas Cromwell and epistolary networks at the Tudor court, as well as a digital edition of Privy Council registers from the reign of Henry VIII. Recent articles can be found in Huntington Library Quarterly, Journal of Historical Network Research, and International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing.
Vera Yakupova, PhD Researcher, Trinity College Dublin (CLS INFRA)
Blog Post: October 9th, 2025
Vera is a PhD researcher at Trinity College Dublin in the Digital Humanities department, focusing on privacy and surveillance in science fiction literature, working with traditional as well as digital methods in literary studies. Between 2022-2025, Vera Yakupova was a research assistant for the CLS INFRA (Computational Literary Studies Project) within Prof. Jennifer Edmond’s research group, based at the Centre for Digital Humanities at TCD. She obtained her MPhil in Modern and Contemporary Literary Studies at Trinity College Dublin (2021-2022) while expanding her research interest into the Digital Humanities and Computational Literary Studies. Her BA was in Interdisciplinary American Studies at the University of Tuebingen, Germany, where she worked as a research assistant at the department for English Literatures and cultures in Prof. Matthias Bauer’s and Prof. Angelika Zirker’s research group (2018-2021).
Dr Izzy Fox, Postdoctoral Researcher, Arts and Humanities Institute, Maynooth University (GEMINI)
Blog Post: October 23rd, 2025
Izzy is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Maynooth University in Ireland. She worked on the recently concluded GEMINI project, and before that on the AHRC and IRC-funded Full Stack Feminism project. In April 2025 Izzy was awarded seed funding by Maynooth University to develop a research project exploring the impact of SWERF and TERF online discourse and moral panics on the wellbeing of sex worker and trans communities in Ireland.
You can find most of the presentations and posters from the DARIAH-EU Annual Event 2025 ‘The Past’ in the DARIAH Community on Zenodo.
