Shabba McDermott

Research Topic: Nature, Nation and Negotiation: The Irish Experience of National Parks

Supervisor: Ian McBride

My doctoral research examines the history of Ireland's national parks from the creation of Killarney National Park in 1932 to the present. It asks how an independent Irish state came to protect, govern and imagine its landscapes, and why the development of a national park system proved such a slow and fragmented process.

Rather than treating national parks simply as spaces of environmental protection, the project approaches them as sites where questions of land, history, identity and belonging intersect. I trace the negotiations over former estates and contested land through which parks were created, and consider how the legacies of famine, dispossession and landlordism shaped both the landscapes chosen for protection and how they were governed. I also look to the Irish Literary Revival as a source of environmental knowledge-production, exploring how writers and cultural movements helped establish mountains, lakes, bogs and woodlands as distinctively Irish landscapes.

At the centre of the project is a broader question: what did a national park mean in a post-colonial state that never fully defined the concept in law? By following the changing meanings attached to national parks across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the research shows how ideas of nature, nation and public land were negotiated in the absence of a statutory framework.

The project also speaks to contemporary debates about nature restoration and environmental governance. As Ireland approaches a century of national park experience while preparing its first dedicated national parks legislation, the research asks how a system that has grown piecemeal since 1932 can be understood, formalised and justified in law. In doing so, it explores the enduring tensions between ecological protection and competing claims to land, heritage, memory and community.

Funding

• Wolfson Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities, University of Oxford (2026–2029)
• Peter Storey Scholarship, Balliol College, Oxford (2026–2029)
• St Leonard's Masters Scholarship, University of St Andrews (2025–2026)
• Weldon-le-Huray Arts and Humanities Scholarship, Durham University (2022–2025)

Prizes 

• Stephen W. Bonarjee Prize, University of St Andrews (2026), awarded for the best Distinction in the MLitt programme

• Dean's List, University of St Andrews (2025–2026), awarded for academic excellence

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Before starting my DPhil, I completed a BA in History at Durham University (South College), graduating with First Class Honours. My final-year dissertation, A Killarney Gift to an Irish Nation: Nature, Nation and the Reimagining of Irish Space', supervised by Professor Cherry Leonardi, examined the creation of Killarney National Park and received a mark of 81.

I then completed an MLitt in Modern History at the University of St Andrews, graduating with Distinction. My master's dissertation, 'National Parks in All But Name? Special Parks, Planning Power, and the Scottish Conception of the Protected Landscape, 1951–2003', traced the development of Scottish national park thinking through the work of John Foster and his leadership of the Countryside Commission for Scotland, focusing in particular on the Commission's proposal, A Park System for Scotland and its idea of the "Special Park". It was supervised by Professor Bernhard Struck and Dr Sarah Leith and received a mark of 19.5/20.

LinkedIn - Shabba McDermott: www.linkedin.com/in/shabba-mcdermott