Nadia Dobrianska

Nadia’s research is focused on the inter-communal conflict between 1920 and 1922 in the six counties that formed Northern Ireland. Her PhD project explores representations of this conflict in different strands of contemporaneous Irish and British politics of 1920-1922. The conflict claimed 498 lives in Belfast alone and is known as ‘Belfast pogrom’ among Irish nationalists. Nadia’s doctoral project aims to uncover from primary sources, and critically examine, representations of the conflict in Northern Ireland made by its contemporaries and how these representations formed different political discourses. She hopes that this study will produce a nuanced understanding of the nature of this conflict, not only in the political context of Ireland and Great Britain, but also in the context of Europe in the aftermath of the First World War.

PhD

Supervisor: Professor Heather Jones, Dr Anna Maguire
Working title: ‘The Troubles during Partition. Representations of the inter-communal conflict in Northern Ireland in 1920-1922 in Irish and British political discourse’
Expected completion date: 2025

Publications

• Nadia Dobrianska (2024): Review of Ireland and Ukraine: Studies in Comparative Imperial and National History ed. by Stephen Velychenko, Joseph Ruane and Liudmyla Hrynevych. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 25, no. 2.
• Nadia Dobrianska (2023): The Weaver Street bombing in Belfast 1922: violence, politics and memory, Irish Historical Studies, 47(172), pp. 259–277. 
• Alan Renwick, Nadia Dobrianska, Conor J. Kelly & Charlotte Kincaid (2022): Public attitudes to referendums on Irish unification in Northern Ireland: evidence from an online consultation, Irish Political Studies, DOI: 10.1080/07907184.2022.2152797;
• ‘Finding Aid: Digital sources on inter-communal violence in Belfast in 1920-1922’, v. 1 (2021), QUB Working Paper in Irish Studies; 
• ‘Minorities, Partition and the Formation of Northern Ireland’, blog post for the Northern Ireland Centenary Advisory Historical Panel.

Media and podcasts

• Documentary film 'Pogrom Bhéal Feirste' (the Belfast Porgom), produced by Clean Slate TV, broadcast on 4 December 2024 on TG4 (contributor).
• 'Ukraine and Ireland a shared history’,The Irish Passport podcast, 23 February 2022
• ‘Ireland and Ukraine’, The Irish Story podcast, 30 April 2022.

Prizes and Scholarships

• Graduate Research Scholarship / Overseas Research Scholarship at University College London, 2022-2025;
• Chevening Scholarship (FCDO) at Queen’s University Belfast, 2019-2020;
• Konstantin Yemelianov Scholarship at the Law School of National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy for academic excellence and contribution to the community, 2007-2008.

Teaching

• Postgraduate Teaching Assistant, 'Writing History', UCL, 2024/2025.
• Postgraduate Teaching Assistant, 'Global History of Humanitarianism', UCL, 2024/2025.
• Guest lecturer, 'Introduction to public policy and policy process', National University ‘Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’, 2017/2018.

Conferences

• 'An Anti-Catholic Pogrom, reprisals against Sinn Féin or party rioting? A contested history of urban intercommunal violence in North-East Ulster, 1920-22' at the Society for the History of War conference, 28-29 November 2024, Nicosia.
• “‘The Belfast Pogrom’: cultural understandings by the Irish Catholics of the inter-communal violence in the emerging Northern Ireland, 1920-22” at the Catholics in Conflict, 1914-1945, Day Symposium (13 June 2024) at UCL.
• Chair of the panel on comparative studies in civil wars, The Irish Civil War National Conference, University College Cork, 15-18 June 2022.