Clara Neary is an Assistant Lecturer in Communications and English at the Atlantic Technological University (Donegal) and a Visiting Scholar at Queen’s University Belfast.
She has a BSc in Psychology, a BA in English Language and Literature, an MA in Modern Literary Studies and a PhD in English Language and Literature, all awarded by Queen’s University Belfast. She has a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (awarded May 2014) and is a Senior Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy (awarded Nov. 2023).
With over 12 years’ experience in academia, Clara has supervised undergraduate, Masters and Doctoral research. She is a peer-reviewer for several academic publishers, including Cambridge University Press, Routledge, Palgrave and Bloomsbury. She is also an External Examiner in UK higher education and is the current Publicity Officer for the international Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA).
Clara has published widely in the area of Cognitive Stylistics, using approaches drawn from literary, linguistic and cognitive perspectives to analyse a variety of texts across the genres of poetry, autobiography, contemporary fiction and music and has particular expertise in the area of Indian Literature in English.
She is currently researching female self-representations of the experience of pain and of female infertility, commencing with life-writing by Hilary Mantel and Emily Pine.
She leads a Special Interest Group (SIG) on ‘Stylistics and Health’ at the annual international Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA) Conference and is currently editing a collection for Bloomsbury which showcases current explorations into the relationship between language and experiences of health and healthcare.
She is also involved in a cross-border collaboration with Dr Jane Lugea at Queen’s University Belfast on the development of a programme of reading groups especially for people with dementia. The ‘Still Reading' project has secured funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Queen’s University Belfast, and has partnered with dementia charities, libraries and community organisations both sides of the border to provide a sustainable means of enabling people with dementia to continue to enjoy the benefits of reading.
Literary studies; English language studies; Critical Discourse Analysis; Stylistics; Cognitive Stylistics; Indian Literature in English; Life-Writing; and Postcolonial / Global Literatures.
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
