Academic Staff

Dr. Sorcha O'Brien

Assistant Lecturer

Dr. Sorcha O’Brien is a design historian interested in technology and identity, in both 3D physical and digital forms. She is interested in broad issues surrounding technology and identity in design, whether mechanical, electrical or digital, particularly considering how technological artefacts are represented on screen and in print, and their meaning to the wider population (not just designers, architects and engineers). With a background in industrial and digital design, she is interested in issues surrounding the design of electrical appliances, computers and networked devices at work and in the home, critical design and the creation of online and film worlds, as well as the pedagogy involved in using digital technology in education. She completed her AHRC-funded PhD on the representation of electrical technology in 1920s Ireland at the University of Brighton, which was published in 2017 by Irish Academic Press as Powering the Nation: Images of the Shannon Scheme and Electricity in Ireland.

Dr O’Brien is the curator of the exhibition Kitchen Power: Women’s Experiences of Rural Electrification, which ran in the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life from July 2019 to December 2020. This exhibition was one outcome from her AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellow, through Kingston University, researching the introduction of electrical products into the Irish home in the wake of rural electrification in the 1950s and 1960s, in partnership with the National Museum of Ireland. Although domestic electric products were seen as modernising technologies in many other countries, this project uses object analysis, archival research and oral history to consider to what extent these meanings held in the Republic of Ireland, particularly to rural Irish housewives, and will also result in a forthcoming book. The project included a number of oral history interviews carried out through the Irish Countrywomen’s Association and a collaborative textile art project with Age & Opportunity and women in the Castlebar area. She has also appeared on television on RTÉ One, and on radio on RTÉ Radio 1, Newstalk FM, Lyric FM and several local radio stations talking about the project.

An active organiser of conferences, both in-person and online, and an experienced peer reviewer, Dr. O’Brien was also the Social Media Officer for the Journal of Design History and runs an Irish design history mailing list. She is a member of the Design History Society, the Society for the History of Technology and the Institute of Designers in Ireland Education section.

Research Interests: Design history, material culture, Irish design, Irish design history, history of technology, oral history, national identity, technology, modernity, gender, curation, electricity, digital technology.