John Heaton-Armstrong
DPhil Student - Oriel College
Research Topic: The Politics of the Peloton: Cycling Governance and the Memory of Division in Twentieth-Century Ireland
Supervisor: Marc Mulholland
I am a DPhil student researching the relationship between sport, politics and memory in modern Ireland. My doctoral project, 'The Politics of the Peloton: Cycling Governance and the Memory of Division in Twentieth-Century Ireland', examines Irish cycle sport between 1922 and 2002. It explores how divisions within cycling reflected wider tensions surrounding partition, national identity and the legacy of Civil War, and what the eventual reunification of the sport meant for those involved.
My research combines archival sources and contemporary press coverage with an original collection of oral-history interviews with riders and officials. I am particularly interested in the relationship between institutional accounts and lived experience: how political loyalties shaped sporting life, what participants chose to remember or leave unspoken, and how their interpretations changed over time. Through cycling, I ask how people navigated inherited divisions and whether practical cooperation could help overcome them.
I read Modern History as an undergraduate (many moons ago) and have recently completed an Mst in Modern British and Irish History, both at Oxford. My wider research interests include modern Irish and British history, sports history, oral history, and the ways societies remember political conflict.
