Deirdre’s new short aerial dance film “The Clouds are not Inaccessible”, based on an unknown surrealist text by Lucia Joyce premiered at the Irish Film Institute on Bloomsday 2026 as part of Bloomsday Film Festival, and won the Best Poetry Film Award at Ó Bhéal Poetry Film Festival in Cork Art Theatre on November 1st, 2026! Deirdre also shared the film as part of her illustrated talk reclaiming Lucia Joyce as an artist at the Eugene O’Neill Festival in New Ross Library on October 16th, 2026.  

Deirdre is author of Irish Moves, an illustrated history of dance and physical theatre in Ireland (The LIffey Press), and Orientalism, Orientation, and The Nomadic Work of Pina Bausch (Peter Lang Gmbh).  Committed to re-inscribing the body into Irish cultural history, Deirdre’s influential BAI-funded feature radio documentary, short dance film ‘Lucia Joyce: Full Capacity’, and her Joyce Studies Annual essay ‘Fail Better: Lucia Joyce and the Abbey Theatre Ballets’, change the accepted ‘mad girl’ narrative, and invite consideration of Lucia Joyce as a significant artist in her own right. Her booklet “Lucia Joyce: Full Capacity” (Grand Canal Publishing, reviewed in Village Magazine) is available at Shakespeare and Co, Paris; and in Dublin at various outlets including James Joyce Centre, The Library Project, Books Upstairs, The Winding Stair Bookshop, and Connolly Books, as well as at Limerick’s Quay Bookstore.  Marking the 40th anniversary of Lucia Joyce’s death, in 2022 Deirdre presented an immersive  interdisciplinary Saint Lucia’s Day event celebrating Joyce’s overlooked creativity at Dublin’s James Joyce Centre, entitled ‘Come and See Me, I’m a Crossword Puzzle’.   In tandem with this, Deirdre curated an associated exhibition featuring her own original research, which ran until June 2024.   She directed Michael Hastings’ play ‘Calico’ for Bloomsday Festival 2021, as research for her own play ‘Brancusi Bird’, supported by an Arts Council Agility Award and ‘Burn Bright. Scene readings were presented in Ranelagh Arts Festival 2023, and as part of a Bloomsday Festival talk on Berenice Abbott in 2024.   Deirdre has presented  many talks on Lucia Joyce, from Trieste Joyce Summer School, to National Library of Ireland, to Princeton University FÍS, and a Bloomsday 2025 illustrated talk entitled “Lucia Joyce in Paris” at Dublin’s Alliance Française, inspired by her 2024 residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais.  In February 2026 Deirdre gave key note lecture “Haunted: Dancing Ghosts and Contemporary Irish Performance” at University of Lille Conference “Performing Female Bodies: Creative Corporeality in the English Speaking World”, which will be published in a forthcoming collection.  

Deirdre produces and directs theatre, and her own creative film documentaries including ‘Damhsa na hÉigeandála’ (TG4), and ‘1943 – A Dance Odyssey’ (RTE), reclaiming Irish-German modern dance pioneer Erina Brady; ‘TRUE NORTH’ about her parents’ time teaching on First Nations Reservations in remote north Ontario; and many more BAI-funded, commissioned, and Indie projects with her own production company ‘Out There Productions’. Deirdre has contributed over ten essays to RTE Sunday Miscellany; several chapters to books on theatre and dance; and her Arts journalism has appeared in top publications. Deirdre’s 2004 interview with the late, great Sinéad O’Connor, about her love for her children, was selected for inclusion in the  book, “Sinéad O’Connor: The Last Interview”.  On top of her original academic work, teaching, broadcasting, and making original feature radio documentaries (RTE Lyric FM & Newstalk 106 – 108fm), Deirdre curates exhibitions too. 

 Deirdre contributed about her own family’s unique adventures to Photo Album of the Irish: Canada, and about her late Limerick father to Fifty Irish Lives in Canada.  She is currently making a documentary in collaboration with Cat Lake Archive Group entitled ‘Turtle Island Family Album’ featuring her Mother, and her Ojibway school friends (supported by Canada Council for the Arts & Cat Lake First Nation).  She was delighted to chat about this unique Irish-Canadian connection with CBC’s Jessica Pope on Saint Patrick’s Day 2026 and with RTE Nationwide’s Valerie Waters, broadcast in April 2026. 

During the pandemic, Deirdre undertook Ardteist Gaeilge Ardleibhéal, and was delighted to get a H2!  In 2022 Deirdre directed a TG4 Finné episode on one of her Gaeilge gurus, ‘Limerick’s own Billy Elliot’, Roy Galvin.  Her experimental short Goodbye Marian Avenue premiered in Irish Artist Film Index’s ‘2 Films, 3 Clues’ 2025 screening at VAI. Deirdre was an invited participant in Global Irish Studies’ ‘Ulysses and the World’ symposium at Georgetown University (2022), and enjoyed being on the founding steering committee of #Ulysses80 virtual bookclub.  Her influential short film Lucia Joyce: FULL CAPACITY was selected for Bloomsday Film Festival 2022 at the IFI, and is part of the James Joyce Centre permanent collection. Deirdre was awarded a place on the Irish Writers Centre National Mentoring programme 2024. 

Deirdre serves on the advisory board of Northern Attitudes Dance Company, and the peer elected Independent Academic Advisory board of the Yeats International Summer School.