I moved to Dublin in September 2024 for my MPhil in International Peace Studies at Trinity College Dublin, expecting to stay for a year. I stayed longer, and by the time I left I had written a dissertation awarded Distinction, developed a sharper analytical framework than the one I arrived with, and found that the city had become home in a way I hadn’t anticipated.
Trinity
The MPhil in International Peace Studies is a one-year programme that sits at the intersection of conflict studies, international law, human rights, and transitional justice. It drew a small, internationally diverse cohort — people coming from different national contexts, disciplinary backgrounds, and professional experiences — and the seminar environment reflected that. Discussions were shaped not just by the readings but by what people in the room had actually seen and done: practitioners alongside academics, perspectives from the Global South alongside European and American ones. That changed how I thought about my own work. My research on right-wing movements in the US and UK benefited from being tested against frameworks and experiences I wouldn’t have encountered in a programme closer to home.
The coursework pushed me in directions I hadn’t expected. Modules on international law and forced displacement introduced me to the legal architecture around climate refugees and the argument that climate change constitutes a form of structural violence — a framework I hadn’t engaged with before and that expanded how I think about the relationship between institutional frameworks and lived harm. Coursework on transitional justice deepened the thinking I’d begun at Outright International about how post-conflict accountability processes include or exclude marginalised communities. These weren’t tangential to my core interests; they were extensions of the same structural question — who gets protected by the frameworks that claim to protect everyone, and what happens in the gap.
My dissertation — Power, Illusion, and Exclusion: Gender, Xenophobia, and Right-Wing Politics in the United States and United Kingdom from the 2010s to the Present — was the culmination of the year’s work. It was awarded Distinction, as was the overall degree. I wrote most of it in the 1937 Reading Room, which became the space I associated most with the kind of sustained, rigorous thinking the programme demanded. High ceilings, good light, the particular quiet of a room full of people concentrating — it was where the arguments took shape.
The rest of Dublin operated on a different register. I walked everywhere — partly because I preferred it, partly because waiting for the Luas requires a patience I never quite developed. Dublin is a walkable city if you’re willing to accept that the wind will be against you in both directions and that the rain is less an event than a general condition. I made my peace with the weather, mostly. The wind off the Liffey in January is a different proposition.
Working
I supported myself in Dublin through two roles. I worked part-time at Russell & Bromley on Grafton Street, which over the course of several months gave me an appreciation for quality footwear that I did not previously possess and cannot now undo. It was fast-paced retail in the centre of the city, and it sharpened my instincts for reading people quickly and communicating clearly under pressure.
I also interned with World Vision Ireland, processing donations, maintaining donor records, clearing a three-month backlog of failed transactions, and training colleagues on CRM systems. That role involved substantive operational work — contacting donors to reconcile payment information across multiple data sources, handling sensitive financial records with accuracy and discretion — and reinforced skills that carry directly into the kind of roles I’m building toward.
Sandycove and the Forty Foot
After finishing my degree I stayed on, living in Sandycove — a small coastal village south of the city centre, right on Dublin Bay. The Forty Foot is there: a rocky swimming spot that has been in use for centuries. I didn’t go regularly, but the times I did mattered. It’s hard to describe what makes the place significant without overstating it or reducing it to the scenery. The water, the rocks, the view across the bay, the unhurried quality of time spent there — it became a point of stillness in a period that was otherwise about figuring out what came next. By the end, it felt less like a place I visited and more like a place that belonged to me. Some of my most important memories in Dublin are at the Forty Foot, and I’ll leave it at that.
Sandycove was also where I got to experience sailing in Dublin Bay. Someone I’d been connected with when I first arrived — hardly more than an acquaintance at the time — invited me to crew on a boat called Misfits, through his parents. That invitation became one of the unexpected gifts of my time in Ireland. Learning to crew, being out on the bay, becoming part of something that required trust and attention alongside people I was still getting to know — it was a different kind of education. That person became one of the most important people in my life, and the connection is one I’ll carry well beyond Dublin.
The People
Dublin is where I made some of the closest friendships of my life so far. The people I met there travelled with me — to Barcelona, to Morocco, interrailing through Europe — and eventually back to Tunis before I returned to Seattle. The social life I built was not incidental to the experience; it was a large part of what made Dublin feel like home.
I also, somewhere along the way, started to enjoy wine — not with any particular expertise, but with enough genuine interest to have preferences. And I will not drink Guinness outside of Ireland, though I wouldn’t be the one ordering it inside Ireland either. The principle stands regardless.
What Dublin Is
Dublin gave me two things simultaneously: the intellectual environment to produce the best academic work of my life, and a life outside of that work that made leaving genuinely difficult. The 1937 Reading Room and the Forty Foot don’t have much in common on paper — one is where I spent hours refining arguments about the weaponisation of women’s rights rhetoric, the other is where I sat on the rocks and let the thinking settle — but they represent what I need from a place. The chance to do serious work, and somewhere to go when the work is done that makes everything else make sense.