Biography
Aideen is a PhD candidate in the ReproSoc research group, under the supervision of Prof. Sarah Franklin and Dr. Lucy Van De Wiel. Aideen has a B.A. (Hons) in Sociology and French from Trinity College Dublin and an M.A. in Gender Studies (Research) from Utrecht University. Her PhD research is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council Doctoral Training Programme and the Cambridge Trust European Scholarship Programme.
Combining concepts and methods from feminist phenomenology, social movement theory and the sociology of reproduction, her PhD research focuses on the abortion rights movement in the Republic of Ireland, analysing the material and discursive effects of the 8th amendment on processes of subjectivication. Through in-depth qualitative interviews with reproductive justice activists in Ireland, she examines how the anti-abortion amendment operated in the minds/bodies of those living under it. Furthermore, her research investigates the embodied experience of reproductive justice activism in relation to its ability to reconstitute gendered and reproductive embodiment and political subjectivity.
Research Interests
Abortion, reproductive justice, pregnancy, obstetrics, maternal health, social movements, sociology of the body, affect theory, sociology of health and medicine, feminist phenomenology, feminist epistemologies and methodologies, postcolonial and decolonial theory.
Publications
O'Shaughnessy, A.C. (2021) " Triumph and Concession?: The Moral and Emotional Construction of Ireland's Campaign for Abortion Rights" in European Journal of Women's Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505068211040999
After Repeal: Rethinking Abortion Politics. Review. Community Development Journal. 17 September 2020.
https://academic.oup.com/cdj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdj/bsaa033/5906708
O' Shaughnessy, A., 2017. Analysing the abortion rights debate as a question of ‘body theory’. Junctions: Graduate Journal of the Humanities, 2(1), pp.25–36. DOI: http://doi.org/10.33391/jgjh.26
Recording Births and Deaths - The Cultural Histories of Stillbirth and Miscarriage in Ireland and the UK.
A Race Against the “Body Clock”: Abortion and the Temporal Politics of the Waiting Period, ReproSoc Blog.
Why Are You Still Wearing That? Reflections on Reproductive Healthcare (in Ireland) on the Anniversary of the Repeal Referendum.
