Dr Josie O'Donoghue
BA MA PHD
Director of Studies in English, Tutor and Education Coordinator
Dr O'Donoghue is a Fellow, Director of Studies and Undergraduate Tutor at Homerton. She read English at Christ's College from 2004-2007, and returned to Christ's for her doctoral studies after completing a Master’s in Linguistics at University College, London. She was a Junior Research Fellow in English at Clare College from 2017-2021.
Dr O'Donoghue is interested in connections between linguistics and literary criticism, with a particular emphasis on cognitive linguistics and pragmatics. Her doctoral research explored ways in which relevance theory (a theory of communication influential in the field of pragmatics) can influence the interpretation of metaphor in the work of Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson and Seamus Heaney. Her first book, The Relevance of Metaphor: Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop and Seamus Heaney was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2021, and she is currently working on a project on metaphor and translation in contemporary Irish poetry.
Dr O'Donoghue teaches the Shakespeare, Renaissance and Practical Criticism papers at Part I, and Practical Criticism, Lyric and Contemporary Writing at Part II. She supervises dissertations in these areas and on topics related to her research interests.
The Relevance of Metaphor: Communication in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop and Seamus Heaney (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
'The Politics of Metaphor in Heaney's Sweeney Astray', Irish University Review, 47:3 (2017), 450-469
'"A Breather Before We Must Go On?" A Review of Seamus Heaney and the Adequacy of Poetry, by John Dennison', Cambridge Quarterly, 45:3 (2016), 281-291
'Rhythmic Rightness: A Review of Seamus Heaney: New Selected Poems 1988-2013', Cambridge Humanities Review, 9 (2015)
'"A Fling of Freedom": A Review of Metaphor, by Denis Donoghue', Cambridge Quarterly, 44:1 (2015), 69-77
'Is a Metaphor (Like) a Simile? Differences in Meaning, Effects and Processing', UCL Working Papers in Linguistics, 21 (2009), 125-149
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