Rachael Healy
Broadly, my PhD research examines girlhood, violence, and care in post-conflict Belfast since the end of the Troubles in 1998. Focusing on a historically marginalised Irish Catholic neighbourhood shaped by entrenched sectarian and class divisions, I interrogate how “peace” is unevenly lived in the North of Ireland/Northern Ireland today.
My work explores how teenage girls’ practices of care, friendship, and survival unfold within landscapes shaped by ongoing harm, poverty, and segregation. These dynamics take shape within a tight-knit, working-class community where dense social ties, a strong sense of belonging, and shared histories of anti-colonial resistance sustain everyday life, challenging reductive and pathologising narratives of poverty and sectarianism as inherent to the neighbourhood. Positioning girls as central yet overlooked political actors, I trace how legacies of violence are inherited and navigated along gendered, classed, and generational lines. Focusing on youth clubs as key sites of violence prevention, I show how teenage girls engage with youth workers to co-produce relational and ethical forms of care that both navigate ongoing violence and open up alternative social possibilities within the neighbourhood. The project also explores how vernacular narratives of intergenerational trauma are shaping understandings of distress, belonging, and futurity amid a growing youth mental health crisis, and how local meanings of violence are continually reworked in the aftermath of conflict.
Prior to joining Stanford, I received a first-class honours degree in Global Health and Social Medicine from King’s College London. I also received a Master of Arts in Anthropology and Sociology from the Graduate Institute Geneva. Before attending university, I worked for four years in various health advocacy and youth work roles in South Africa, East Jerusalem and Scotland.
