Katie Barnes graduated with a BA (First Class) in English and Creative Writing, (now the Northern School English Multidiscipline degree), then returned for the MA in Literature and Culture at Salford. She is currently finishing a fully AHRC-funded PhD on representations of Irish motherhood in the twenty-first century. She has worked on the South African Modernism project and has taught on several of our literature modules. She has a journal article in print and a book chapter publishing later this year, and has presented her work at major national and international conferences. She won the Dean’s Award at the University of Salford Create Awards and gave a well-received TED talk on her late autism diagnosis. She is on the Executive Council of the British Association for Irish Studies. She was selected for the Trailblazers scheme with Liverpool University Press, to mentor her into publishing her PhD as a monograph.