Festival Forum:
(dis) Ordered Publics

Aoife Monks

Aoife Monks is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries at Queen Mary University of London. She is Director of the Queen Mary Centre for Creative Collaboration, collaborating with artists, arts organisations, funders, unions and government to advocate for the creative workforce.  She is the author of numerous publications on theatre costume, and was the curator of an exhibition and photography book with the costume team at the National Theatre in London in 2019.  She is currently working on a book investigating the history of virtuosity during the Celtic Tiger period in Ireland.  Her research takes account of the peculiar ways in which audiences respond to performance – and performers – at the theatre, exploring what audiences wear to see shows, how they emulate and imitate performers at home, what it means to be a theatre fan, and how audiences imagine backstage spaces and the secret lives of theatre workers.

Emer McLysaght

Emer McLysaght is an Irish author, journalist and columnist best known as the co-creator, with Sarah Breen, of the bestselling Complete Aisling series of novels. Their sixth book, Our Deadly Summer, was published in May 2026.

McLysaght is a columnist with The Irish Times and writes weekly for TheJournal.ie. She has previously worked extensively in radio and digital media. She’s originally from Kill in Co Kildare and now lives in Dublin 8.

Eric Ehigie

Eric Ehigie is a graduate of Law from the University of Galway, holds a Master of Public Policy from the University of Oxford and is training to be a lawyer. He has been involved in community advocacy that aims to help modern Ireland embrace its newfound diversity and rise to the challenges of modernity; once serving on the Board of Women for Election, as the Political Coordinator of Black and Irish and on the Committee of the Longford Africans’ Network. He is passionate about the question of how Ireland can sow social cohesion in contemporary times. Eric is the host of his YouTube channel and podcast, where he publishes content about social, cultural and political issues, and he writes about these issues, also, for his Substack and Medium. Lastly, Eric is a big believer in the power of the arts to help Ireland forge an answer to many of today’s pressing political and cultural questions, and when he can, he publishes spoken work/freestyle poetry and ‘socially conscious’ rap under his ‘Eric Tha Red‘ moniker.

Dr. Natalie Martin

Dr Natalie Martin is a former BBC news producer and has been an Assistant Professor in the
School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham since 2019. Her research focuses on the security dimensions of information and disinformation, with
particular emphasis on the UK and Turkey.
She has published extensively on these issues, including several journal articles and a
monograph examining the Turkey–EU accession process. She is also the author of The
Securitisation of News in Turkey: Journalists as Terrorists (Palgrave, 2020).
Her current research explores the intersection of journalism, disordered information, public
discourse and security. Her recent work examines how journalists working for national
newspapers in the UK understand and perceive the potential threat posed by “disinformation”.
Dr Martin has also collaborated with Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, to develop a
framework for understanding how disordered information can shape both what we know and how we come to know it. In addition, she leads the UK’s first dedicated university module focusing exclusively on the theory and practice of open-source investigation skills.