Meet the Core Research Team
Meet Your Hosts
Ian has authored 12 book length publications on topics including the controversial decisions made to force-feed hunger strikers, how the Irish diet changed (mostly for the worse) in the decades following the Irish Famine and the surprisingly interesting history of stomachs, guts and the microbiome. A History of Ireland in Ten Body Parts (2024) was shortlisted for the An Post Hodges Figgis Irish Book of the Year award. Ian is Book Review Editor for Social History of Medicine journal, and co-PI on the £2 million CHOICE project at Ulster University. In 2020, Ian was the recipient of Ulster University’s Distinguished Research Fellowship. Ian has held visiting fellowships at the Max Planck Centre for the History of Emotions (Berlin), Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, INSERM (Paris) and the Institute for General Practice and Community Medicine (Oslo). In 2022, Ian will be Visiting Research Fellow at HEX (Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experience). Ian makes regular media and festival appearances. He once co-organised a major exhibition at Kilmainham Gaol (Dublin) and acted as a historical consultant on the movie Suffragette, Bobby Sands: 1981 (Fine Point Films), as well as various BBC television shows. He presents research widely across UK, Ireland, America and Australasia.
Between 2023 and 2024, Rhianne was AHRC-IAA funded postdoctoral researcher in public history for the Epidemic Belfast project. She is now Lecturer in Public History at University of North Georgia, following a postdoctoral position at University of Luxemburg. Before joining Ulster University in 2022-23, she completed PhD on the history of Templemore Baths at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research uses the Templemore Avenue Baths in east Belfast as a case study to demonstrate how different factors such as gender, generation, class and ethno-national identity impact upon people’s experiences and memories of leisure in post-war Belfast. Her research also looks at how these components impacted upon local communities’ views of heritage within the area and the regeneration of the Templemore Baths. To be able to explore this understudied area, Rhianne used oral history interviews as her primary methodology. She has done an array of public history initiatives including but not limited to her pop-up exhibition titled ‘Making a splash at the Templemore Baths’, led oral history workshops with local community groups, given public lectures, been a guest on an episode of History Now and is a member of the Centre for Public History at Queen’s University. Rhianne obtained her BA (Hons) History degree from Plymouth University in 2015 and MA degree, also in History, at Queens University in 2017.
Dr Tom Thorpe is a qualified professional Belfast Green Badge Tour Guide, certified to deliver walking tours in Belfast as an affiliate of the Institute of Tourist Guiding. Tom is also a member of the Northern Ireland Tourist Guide Association. Tom is a published professional historian, holding a PhD from King’s College London and having been involved in many local Belfast history projects such as The Men Behind the Glass. Tom is also a professional communicator, having previously had a career as a public relations professional before he became a Belfast tour guide. Tom is an avid podcaster and currently present and produce two history podcasts: the Combat Morale Podcast and Mentioned in Dispatches for the history society, the Western Front Association.
Eugenie works at the Department of Public Health and completed her PhD on the history of cancer in Ireland at Ulster University in 2022. Her project focuses on the disease during the nineteenth century, a time period in which this disease remains understudied. It considers the provision of medical services and relief available to the nineteenth-century cancer patient in Ireland, and the experience of cancer sufferers. Eugenie obtained her BA(Hons) History degree and MA degree, also in History, at Ulster University.
The Epidemic Belfast team remain deeply committed to fostering an inclusive, supportive research culture that prioritises respect for others (including line managers, staff and students), the building of research environments free from harassing or manipulative behaviour and the ethical collation and management of research data, especially that gathered among vulnerable or socially marginalised groups/individuals.
What People Say
In my class “Great Cities: Belfast,” taught in Spring 2022 at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, United States, my students listened to 8 different podcast episodes after listening to multiple lectures on the social and economic history of 19th century industrial Belfast. In pairs, they prepared presentations on their respective podcast episode topics and shared them with me and the class. The Epidemic Belfast Podcast was an invaluable resource for my students as they were able to learn a part of urban and economic history of which they had no prior knowledge. Additionally, many students drew connections between what they learned in the podcasts in terms of vaccinations, quarantines, and other public health measures to their own lived experiences as students during the COVID-19 Epidemic. Later in the semester, students listened to the episodes on polio and thalidomide. Hearing the actual voices of survivors made this history more real and more moving than any reading I could have assigned. I 100% will use Epidemic Belfast in my future classes and its creators and contributors should be congratulated for making such a resource available to researchers and educators around the world.
