Susan’s lifelong concern with social justice issues and power imbalances, underpin her writing and presentations. She uses Michel Foucault’s methods to ’emancipate histories’, using archival materials to unearth and re-examine injustices of the past, retelling them from the perspective of those who were once silenced. She holds a PhD in Social Science from University College Cork.
Her book, The Shawlies: Cork’s Women Street Traders and the ‘Merchant City’ 1901 – 1950 (Four Courts Press, Dublin) examines how government policies designed to protect citizens and revitalise cities worked to criminalise and marginalise the poor women who sold food and clothing in the street market that was Cork’s Coal Quay. Her second book, Dublin’s women street traders, 1882-1932: ‘civic evil’ and civil disobedience (Four Courts Press, Dublin) was published in 2025. In November 2025, she was part of a panel discussion on Irish women and resilience across three centuries at the Royal Irish Academy as part of the Dublin Book Festival.
Susan is a member of the supervisory panel in the Food Studies and Irish Foodways programme at University College Cork. Her articles and book reviews are found on social science blogs including the London School of Economics Review of Books, Discover Society, and the Sociological Review. Work on her next book is underway.
