Eavan O Dochartaigh

Eavan O’Dochartaigh is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Humlab, Arcum (Arctic Research Centre) and the Department of Language Studies (English). She completed her PhD in English at National University of Ireland, Galway in 2017, with the interdisciplinary thesis 'The Visual Culture of the Franklin Search Expeditions to the Arctic, 1848-55.' The study traverses the disciplines and fields of literature, visual culture, history of art, and historical geography and was funded by the Irish Research Council and NUI Galway. She has an MPhil in Polar Studies from the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge and a BA in Archaeology and the History of Art from University College Dublin. She has worked as an illustrator, archaeologist, and GIS technician in the heritage sector in Ireland, the UK, and Iceland.

Her EU-funded project at Humlab, Arctic Visible: Picturing Indigenous Communities in the Nineteenth-Century Western Arctic (ARCVIS), gathers, explores and maps archival data – such as drawings, watercolours, prints, and associated texts – related to the representation of indigenous peoples and their local environments by 'explorers' in the western Arctic (Greenland, Canada, Alaska) during the nineteenth century. Visual material will be exhibited using an online, open-access geodatabase that links pictures to places, making archival content accessible, contextualised and relevant for communities in the Arctic, as well as researchers, teachers and the wider public.