Professor Derval Tubridy
Staff details

Derval Tubridy is Professor in Literature and Visual Culture and Chair of the British Association for Irish Studies.
Author of Thomas Kinsella: The Peppercanister Poems (UCD Press 2001) and Samuel Beckett and the Language of Subjectivity (Cambridge University Press, 2018) she has published extensively on Modernism and Irish Studies with a focus on literature, the visual arts, and performance at the intersection between language, materiality and process. Her creative practice includes poetry, printmaking and painting.
A former Dean of the Graduate School she has served on Council and Academic Board, and the management boards of AHRC and ESRC funded DTPs. Her research has been funded by the Fulbright Commission, the British Council, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
She is co-convener of the London Beckett Seminar at the Centre for Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths and the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London.
Academic qualifications
- PhD Literature, Trinity College Dublin 1997
- MPhil Textual and Visual Studies, Trinity College Dublin 1992
- BA Mod English and Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin 1990
Teaching and Supervision
My teaching philosophy is inclusive and student-centered, generating a collaborative learning environment where student input, participation, and peer-to-peer learning is central. I convene the MA module ‘Postmodern Fiction’ and contribute to BA modules ‘Approaches to Text’ and ‘Explorations in Literature’, BA option ‘Moderns’, and MA module ‘Modern and Contemporary Literary Movements’.
Research interests
Modernism and Irish Studies. Samuel Beckett and Thomas Kinsella; textual and visual studies including the livre d’artiste, small publishing houses, and the history of the book; the grey canon and digital humanities; literary theory and philosophy including constructions of subjectivity and language; neurodiversity and critical posthuman environments in contemporary art and performance.
Publications and research outputs
Book
Tubridy, Derval. 2018. Samuel Beckett and the Language of Subjectivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781316981221
Tubridy, Derval. 2001. Thomas Kinsella: The Peppercanister Poems. Dublin: University of Dublin Press. ISBN 1900621525, 1900621533
Edited Journal
Tubridy, Derval, ed. 2008. Irish Studies Review: Thomas Kinsella Special Issue, Irish Studies Review, 16(3). 0967-0882
Book Section
Tubridy, Derval. 2023. Beckett, Neurodiversity and the Prosthetic: the Posthuman Turn in Contemporary Art. In: Jonathan Bignell; Anna McMullan and Pim Verhulst, eds. Beckett's Afterlives: Adaptation, Remediation, Appropriation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 126-139. ISBN 9781526153791
Tubridy, Derval. 2021. Beckett and Giacometti: An Absolute Regard / Beckett et Giacometti: un regard absolu. In: Daniel Hugo, ed. Giacometti / Beckett: Rater encore, rater mieux. Lyon: Fage éditions, pp. 37-48. ISBN 9782849756584
Tubridy, Derval. 2017. Samuel Beckett and Sonic Art. In: Robert Reginio; David Houston Jones and Katherine Weiss, eds. Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Art. Ibidem Press. ISBN 9783838210797
Tubridy, Derval. 2016. 'An Unforgettable Image': Staging Beckett's Short Plays. In: David Tucker and Trish McTighe, eds. Staging Beckett in Great Britain. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, pp. 135-155. ISBN 9781474240178
Tubridy, Derval. 2013. Bun-Ching Lam's and Samuel Beckett's Quatre Poèmes/Four Songs: Music, Image, Text. In: Kathryn Brown, ed. The Art Book Tradition in Twentieth-Century Europe. Surrey: Ashgate, pp. 59-71. ISBN 978-1-4094-2065-1
Tubridy, Derval. 2013. Visual Culture. In: David Tucker, ed. The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 291-307.
Tubridy, Derval. 2012. Power, Politics, and Polis in Beckett's What Where. In: James Carney; Leonard Madden; Michael O'Sullivan and Karl White, eds. Beckett Re-membered: After the Centenary. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, pp. 166-179. ISBN 978-1-4438-3500-8
Tubridy, Derval. 2011. The Dolmen Press: “A Hazardous Venture”. In: Clare Hutton and Patrick Walsh, eds. The Oxford History of the Irish Book Vol. 5: The Irish Book in English, 1891-2000. 5 Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 576-591. ISBN 978-0-19-924911-4
Tubridy, Derval. 2010. Beckett, Feldman, Salcedo… Neither. In: Daniela Caselli, ed. Beckett and Nothing: Trying to understand Beckett. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 143-159. ISBN 978-0-7190-8019-7
Tubridy, Derval. 2008. “In his secondmouth language”: Joyce and Irish Poetry. In: Richard Brown, ed. A Companion to James Joyce. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 341-358. ISBN 978140511044
Tubridy, Derval. 2006. "The Absence of Origin”: Beckett and Contemporary French Philosophy. In: David Rudrum, ed. Contemporary Debates in Literature and Philosophy. London: Palgrave macmillan, pp. 24-36. ISBN 1403947732
Tubridy, Derval. 2005. National Identity and Urban Topography in Joyce's and Kinsella's Dublin. In: L. Harte; Y. Whelan and P. Crotty, eds. Ireland: Space, Text, Time. The Liffey Press, pp. 35-44. ISBN 1904148832
Tubridy, Derval. 2004. Thomas Kinsella and the Peppercanister Poems. In: Hutton Clare, ed. The Irish Book in the Twentieth Century. Dublin and Portland Or: Irish Academic Press, pp. 102-115. ISBN ISBN 0716527804, 0716533359
Tubridy, Derval. 2000. "Words Pronouncing Me Alive”: Beckett and Incarnation. In: Mary Bryden; Lance St John Butler; Marius Buning and Matthijs Engelberts, eds. Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui: Beckett and Religion; Beckett/Aesthetics/Politics. (9) Amsterdam; Atlanta GA: Rodopi, pp. 93-104. ISBN 9042014040
Tubridy, Derval. 1998. Vain Reasonings: Not I. In: Jennifer Jeffers, ed. Samuel Beckett: A Casebook. New York and London: Garland, pp. 111-131. ISBN 0815325517
Article
Tubridy, Derval. 2018. Theatre and Installation: Perspectives on Beckett. Contemporary Theatre Review, 28(1), pp. 68-81. ISSN 1048-6801
Tubridy, Derval. 2018. Incommensurable Corporealities? Touretteshero's Not I. Contemporary Theatre Review, 28(1), ISSN 1048-6801
Tubridy, Derval. 2014. Samuel Beckett and Performance Art. Journal of Beckett Studies, 23(1), pp. 34-53. ISSN 0309-5207
Tubridy, Derval. 2010. Beckett's Spectral Silence: Breath and the Sublime. Limit(e) Beckett, 1(1), pp. 102-122. ISSN 2105-1119
Tubridy, Derval. 2007. Sounding Spaces: Aurality in Beckett, Nauman and Cardiff. Performance Research, 12(1), pp. 5-11. ISSN 1352-8165
Tubridy, Derval. 2001. The subject doesn't matter, there is none: Language, Subjectivity, and Aporia in Beckett's Unnamable. Journal of Beckett Studies, 10, pp. 196-206. ISSN 03095207
Tubridy, Derval. 2001. Difficult Migrations: The Dinnseanchas of Thomas Kinsella's Later Poetry. Irish University Review, 31(1), pp. 172-186. ISSN 00211427
Art Object
Tubridy, Derval; Austin, Sandra and Archer, Daan. 2005. Cardiac.
Professional Activity
Tubridy, Derval. 2015. Public Policy Engagement in the Arts and Humanities: Skills and Strategies.
Show/Exhibition
Tubridy, Derval. 2017. Adjacency. In: "Adjacency", no format gallery, Arch 29, Rolt Street, Deptford, London SE8 5JB, United Kingdom, 23 March 2017 - 1 April 2017.
Lesley, Hilling; Ivano, Darra; Walter Graham, Reed and Derval, Tubridy. 2013. The Enigmatic World of Joseph Boshier. In: "The Uncovering of Joseph Boshier", Standpoint Gallery, United Kingdom, 8 November 2013 - 6 December 2013.
Further profile content
Featured publications
2018:
Samuel Beckett and the Language of Subjectivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp.x+230. ISBN 9781108483247
Samuel Beckett and the Language of Subjectivity is the first sustained exploration of aporia as a vital, subversive, and productive figure within Beckett's writing as it moves between prose and theatr
2023:
‘Beckett, Neurodiversity and the Prosthetic: the Posthuman Turn in Contemporary Art’, Beckett’s Afterlives: Adaptation, Remediation, Appropriation, ed
The conceptual frameworks through which we understand human corporeality and agency are under stress and need now to be reconfigured. The chapter examines how artist Rebecca Horn and neurodiverse per
2021:
‘Beckett and Giacometti: An Absolute Regard / Beckett et Giacometti: un regard absolue’, Giacometti / Beckett: Rater encore, Rater mieux (Paris: Fage,
The catalogue essay examines the aesthetics and practice of Beckett and Giacometti to demonstrate how writer and artist shared a vital poetics. The chasm that separates the objects of Giacometti’s per
Professional projects
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Goldsmiths Research Centres/Groups
Research projects
Intermedial Beckett
Derval Tubridy’s research project Intermedial Beckett explores the complex intersections between literature, performance and the visual arts. It takes inspiration from Samuel Beckett, using his prose,