Department of History

This thesis discusses how folk music changes as it is passed down over time and transmitted through different cultures. These changes, wherein older cultural material is re-worked into a new artefact is sometimes referred to as the ‘Folk Process’. This project explores how existing digital tools can be used to both identify and map these changes in such a way that is demonstrative of how folk songs that might sound musically different can be linked through their narrative or origin. This research seeks to identify cultural motifs and tropes within an existing cycle of folk songs that are essentially versions or descendants of an older cycle of songs. In charting the genesis and evolution of this case study, it is hoped that this research will be indicative of how the folk process is instrumental in the shaping of cultural identity. Through encoding, analysing, and mapping this information, this thesis seeks to create a pedagogical tool that, it is hoped, may lead to new discussions on how musicological and folkloristic research can be enhanced through Digital Humanities methodologies.

This paper presents and discusses experiences studying different versions of folk
songs as cultural objects, and will investigate how using specific Digital Humanities
tools may assist the versioning of intangible oral tradition. This was primarily
achieved using The Versioning Machine, a framework and an interface for displaying
multiple versions of text and audio encoded according to the Text Encoding Initiative
(TEI) Guidelines. Through encoding a set number of songs in The Versioning Machine
and displaying the results online, new questions and conclusions could be made
to version cultural material with an emphasis on trying to trace the evolution of
cultural ideas through subsequent iterations of ideas. Using examples from the project
Documenting Transmission: The Rake Cycle1, this paper will examine the effectiveness
of using a specific existing versioning tool to model and map the differences between
versions of folk songs and examine the intangible nature of performance and oral
tradition. How do these digital versions change or reinforce our perception of a song
cycle and transmission processes in general? This paper will give a broad overview of
the Documenting Transmission project and some of the musicological and technical
considerations that were made over the course of the project.

With insulting impudence, this “subversive” (Eckhard Jesse) essay thoroughly scrutinises modern theories on nation (Renan, Hobsbawm/Ranger, Anderson, Gellner). It argues that Renan's beloved nation does not emanate from “the sacrifices to which we have consented” and “the harms we suffered”, but from our collective insanity to feed ourselves to an insatiable beast and to even enjoy being eaten alive. As Hobsbawn/Ranger, Anderson and Gellner have found out nothing of any value, but only cheated us of the truth – the answer to the question why the nation must build on traditions –, this essay discovers the true nature of the nation with the kind assistance of Lacan, Fanon and Sartre: Behind the nation's megalomania lurk its impotence and inferiority complex. As we do not accept its heterogeneity and fragmentation, it wears a “white mask” of homogeneity and traditions to please us, but its subaltern power to never be able to have the desired “white skin” is a cause of constant annoyance. In the manner of a disciple of Camus, this essay does not help us to roll the boulder up the hill, yet suggests that we have no other choice than to constantly try to incorporate “the other”; the rejected, unloved side of ourselves that we project on others to better hate it.
This essay has been awarded second prize in the academic essay competition “Nation 2012?” run by the Deutsche Gesellschaft e.V.

In comparative perspective, these excerpts of my M.A. thesis show how Ukraine and Ireland have developed distinctive forms of representation to depict, describe, remember, explain or cover up their national famine catastrophe (newspaper articles, poems, novels, plays, paintings, films, famine memorials, witness statements, photographies, bodily practices). Furthermore, the thesis argues with the help of Adorno und Steiner that famine experiences cannot be compared to the Shoah experience or other forms of genocidal violence because the hunger death is, inter alia, (1) representable, (2) highly aestiticised and (3) repeated in Ukrainian and Irish culture; instead it suggests to recognise famine experiences as a unique form of suffering.

Proposal of Paper for International Summer School: "Connectivity and Change: Regimes, Conflicts and Revolutions in Global Persepctives" at Ghent University; 2 July 2016; organised by: European Network of Universal and Global History, Ghent Centre for Global Studies, Ghent University History Department, International Research Centre „Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History“ (re:work), Labex transferS Paris, and the Graduate School ‘Global and Area Studies’, Leipzig University

Proposal of Paper for Online Conference "Terence MacSwiney, Cork Men's Gaol, and the Political Hunger Strike, 1920-2020", 8-10 October 2020, University College Cork
Conference Recordings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUgeMqy4LTM&feature=youtu.be

Proposal of Paper for the 15th Annual Graduate Conference in European History (GRACEH), Motions of Knowledge - Knowledge in Motion. Conceptalizing "Knowledge Circulation" for Historical Research, 7-9 April 2021, Online-Conference, Universität Wien

Unpublished B.A. Thesis

Examining the canonized Russian literature and art of the 19th century, this work analyses how the Northern Caucasus was gendered and how cultural constructions of the female were utilisied to dominate, culturally construct and suppress the orient.

Das Essay ist nicht nur als eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme, die die politische Entwicklung in Deutschland und der westlichen Welt seit dem Ende des Kalten Krieges und dem Mauerfall kritisch reflektiert, zu verstehen, sondern auch als ein leidenschaftliches Plädoyer dafür, mehr Realpolitik zu wagen.

Proposal of Paper for hybrid conference "The Holodomor in Academic and Public Debates: Ukrainian and European Perspectives"; 17.-18.09.2021 in Berlin; Deutsch-Ukrainische Historikerkommission / Німецько-українська комісія істориків. The keynote speech, as well as the whole conference, will be streamed on the Commission’s Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk2Bag_lfzHdH8jm_3n3skw.

When members of the militant women's suffrage organisation Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) started to go on hunger strike when imprisoned, they challenged the British prison authorities that firstly struggled to find an adequate answer to this new form of political protest at the beginning of the 20th century. With the introduction of forcible feeding, the British prison administration could adapt to new requirements, neutralise the suffragettes' hunger strike and set the terms of the prison battle. As the question of the responsibility of the prison administration in implementing forcible feeding has not yet been touched, this article examines how the Irish prison administration applied certain administrative practices in order to avoid taking responsibility when implementing forcible feeding of mentally competent patients into the Irish prison system.
This chapter is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.de),