who comes from Dublin is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Queen's University Belfast. She previously taught at the Universities of Cambridge and Notre Dame. She is the author of numerous works on the state apparatus in relation to nationalist and unionist political formations in Ireland from the late nineteenth century to partition. She has published on the Royal Irish Constabulary and its role in provincial Ireland in the nineteenth century; on partition; the Boundary Commission of 1925; the fringe-fenian press; the careers of Roger Casement and Tom Kettle; on Belfast in the 1960s and 70s; and on Ian Paisley; and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. She co-edited with Mary E. Daly '1916 in 1966; Commemorating the Easter Rising' (Royal Irish Academy, 2007). Her current research focuses on commemoration and propaganda wars in the Irish public sphere, and the politics of Irish literature.