Rachael Healy

Field of Interest(s)
youth, class, colonialism, landscapes, intergenerational trauma, care, commemorative practice, memory, space/place-making, narrative, borderlands/segregation, post-conflict life, Northern Ireland/Ireland, political identity

Broadly, my PhD research focuses on youth culture and teenage life in post-conflict Belfast since the end of the Troubles. I am interested in discourses of intergenerational trauma and community spaces and how these are seen as points of relation in a larger communal making-sense of a growing youth mental health crisis in a West Belfast neighbourhood. My research explores understandings about how vernaculars of political violence shift according to new and ever-expanding pressures and priorities in community life and cultural cultivation for those living in the aftermath of conflict. Focusing on a neighbourhood that has been historically marginalized due to entrenched sectarian and class divisions, I interrogate the reality and everyday experiences of peace in the North of Ireland/Northern Ireland today.

Prior to joining Stanford, I received a first class honors 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 public health and youth work roles in Palestine, South Africa and Scotland.

Publications: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09589236.2020.1845628?journalCode=cjgs20

 

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