Women of the Borderlands: A Walking Biographical Study of Women's Everyday Lives on the UK/Irish Border

Women of the Borderlands: A Walking Biographical Study of Women’s Everyday Life on the UK/Irish Border,' is a collaboration with Dr Theresa O’Keefe of University College Cork and Dr Niall Gilmartin at the University of Ulster. This two-year project was awarded funding under the HEA North-South Research Programme to investigate women's relationship with the border on the island of Ireland. This project uses Walking as a Biographical Method or ‘walking interviews’ to explore how women's lives were shaped by living in communities along the UK/Irish border during the Troubles and since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. As a Postdoctoral Researcher on this project, I will be conducting mobile interviews with the participants. The interviews will be/are usually conducted in two parts - the first part being in-situ with the participant mapping their journey along the border.The second part of these interviews will see participants take the researcher on journeys that mimic their routine border crossings taken for work, to visit or care for family, for leisure, to run errands, or other ordinary journeys taken as part of everyday life. Through this project, we endeavour to document the gendered impacts of border life and will publicly archive untold stories of how women navigated the border as part of everyday life.