Exist Unapologetically

Ola Majekodunmi was born in Lagos, Nigeria and raised in Dublin, Ireland. She is a broadcaster, freelance journalist, Gaeilgeoir, creator, co-founder of Beyond Representation and Board of Directors member on Foras na Gaeilge, Mother Tongues Ireland, soon Dublin Film Festival and a member of Galway Film Centre’s National Talent Academy Steering Committee.

William Keohane is a writer from Limerick. His poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish Times, the RTÉ Radio 1 Sunday Miscellany Programme, and Queering the Green, an anthology of post-2000 Queer Irish poetry. His essays have been published in Banshee. In 2019, he was shortlisted for the Hennessy Literary Award in the Emerging Poetry category. In 2021, he was shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, and was one of ten poets selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series. William holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Limerick. 

Jimmy is a learner, educator, and scholar. He runs a research and education project called‘Tuiscint na Talún’, which can be translated as ‘wisdom of the land’ from Gaeilge. Heestablished Tuiscint na Talún for the purpose of challenging manifestations of colonialityand whiteness in Ireland in conjunction with the revitalisation of Gaelic ways of being andknowing. Jimmy is an Associate Researcher with the MA in Race, Migration and DecolonialStudies at University College Dublin.

Patrick Doyle is Lecturer in Irish Politics and Community Development in the Department of Politics and Public Administration. Patrick’s interests cover Irish political history as well as the historical relationship between capitalism and religion. Before joining the University of Limerick he was a Hallsworth Research Fellow in Political Economy at the University of Manchester where he examined the relationship between Catholicism and economic development in Ireland.

Patrick’s first book Civilising Rural Ireland examines the history of the co-operative movement and its role in Irish state-building and was published by Manchester University Press in 2019. Other publications have appeared in History of European Ideas, Journal of Social History, and Irish Studies Review. He is also a member of Ireland’s Social and Solidarity Economy Network and interested in the application of democratic principles in social and economic development.

Mamobo Ogoro is a social psychology PhD candidate and social entrepreneur. Fueled by both her personal experience and her academic background in prejudice, racism and dual cultural identity, Mamobo’s research highlights the media and social representations of diverse identities in Ireland. As the founder Gorm Media, a start-up impact focused digital media company, Mamobo is on a mission to unify the world. At Gorm Media, our mission curate common ground, and spark a movement of unity and shared understanding, and through innovative digital media that captures the stories, nuances, and experiences of those in our community, we believe that we can unify!

Declan Mills was born in East Sussex in the UK to Irish parents, and lived both there and in Dublin before settling in Limerick, where he works as the Student Support Officer for the University of Limerick’s Kemmy Business School. A two-time graduate of UL, he holds an MA in History and has published numerous papers on religious warfare and the cultural framing of British imperialism. An avid cook, Declan plays video games enthusiastically but badly, and writes fiction, poetry, music reviews and political opinion pieces. An unashamed emo kid during his schooldays in the misty past of the mid-2000s, he still plays the guitar and dreams of being a rockstar, but is coming to accept that he is in fact 31 and has a job and responsibilities. He sits on the Policy Committee of the Social Democrats, goes for daily walks, and is perpetually exhausted.

Daniah Khayat is a third-year Ph.D. student in African American literature at the University of Limerick, Ireland. Before starting her Ph.D. program, Khayat lectured at Taif University at her home in Saudi Arabia. Khayat received her Master of Arts from the University of Central Oklahoma in 2011. Her master’s thesis focused on Autobiography and Feminism in Saudi Arabia. For her Ph.D. thesis, Khayat is currently researching the presentation of Black fathers and fatherhood in contemporary African American novels.

Teresa Buczkowska is a Polish migrant woman living in Ireland since 2005. She works as the Integration Manager at the Immigrant Council of Ireland. Teresa's educational background is Ethnology and Social Anthropology. She is a qualified trainer in diversity management, intercultural competency and anti-racism and has published both in Ireland and internationally on racism, integration best practices and integration politics. In December 2019 Teresa was appointed to the board of the Arts Council.

Sven Kretzschmar hails from Saarland, Germany’s smallest state. His poetry has been published widely in Europe and overseas, among other outlets with Poetry Jukebox in Belfast, in Writing Home. The ‘New Irish’ Poets (Dedalus Press, 2019), Poets Meet Politics (Hungry Hill Writing, 2020) Hold Open the Door (UCD Press, 2020), 100 Words of Solitude (Rare Swan Press, 2021) and Voices 2021 (Cold River Press, 2021), in The Irish Times, Live Encounters, Das Gedicht, Loch Raven Review, Wordpeace, 2 Meter Review, The Bangor Literary Journal and Selcouth Station. He was awarded 1st prize in the ‘Creating a Buzz in Strokestown’ competition in 2018 and he was shortlisted for the Allingham Poetry Award 2019, the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year 2019 and the Saolta Arts Annual Poetry Competition 2020, special mention in the Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition 2020.

See more at: https://trackking.wordpress.com/ and Instagram: @sven_saar_poetry

Cordula Bieri is a PhD researcher at the School of Social Work and Social Policy of Trinity College Dublin and is a recipient of the Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship. Her PhD research focuses on the housing experiences of refugees who have recently been granted international protection. Cordula has a MA degree in Sociology from the University of Zurich and has previously worked for Non-profit organisations in Switzerland, where her research and advocacy work had a strong focus on the intersection of poverty, housing and migration.

Eric Ehigie is a Law and Business student at NUI Galway, and the Politics Coordinator at Black and Irish. He is the host of the Engaging with Eric Podcast, which aims to lead conversations on some of today’s most pertinent social issues. He is also the co-host of the Political inCorrectors Podcast, which is a current affairs and politics podcast that strives to engage with Irish politics in a way that is accessible for young people. Eric is a community activist, who believes in the ability of young people to contribute to the betterment of the world, and also enjoys writing on social issues that are important to him.

Carrie O’Neill – Caz to her friends – is a burned-out millennial trans woman living in Limerick. Writing poetry, prose fiction and non-fiction, she is interested in the intersections between myth and history and in chronicling the economic and social abandonment and exploitation her generation have endured at the hands of Irish state since the Celtic Tiger. When not writing, she can be found composing music, playing tabletop RPGs, going for long walks in the dark, cooking Mediterranean cuisine, or playing video games. She likes hearing other people’s stories, and dislikes hearing other people explain how their specific version of Irish nationalism is genuinely leftwing and not remotely xenophobic. She can be found on Twitter at @CazKate.

Gareth Brinn has been an active member of the University’s community having volunteered with the Communities Committee and been a student leader. Gareth also believes in writing as a form of activism having published work for Unsilencing Black Voices and Douglass

Week. Gareth is also a panellist for Gorm Media which produces a bi-weekly YouTube series that dissects the social issues facing Ireland today.

Sandrine Uwase Ndahiro is an English Ph.D. student in the University of Limerick. Sandrine’s research centres on third generation African writers, such as Afrofuturists, who have emerged during the era of late liberalism and who have introduced multiple and nuanced perspectives for reflecting on African lives and aspirations. She co-produced a documentary entitled Unsilencing Black Voices which details personal stories and accounts by members of the black community in Ireland. She is currently an artist in residency in Visual Carlow where she is directing a new film that looks at Irishness from a localised setting.