Mitchell Scholar Blogs

The tech world is many things. Complex, controversial, Californian. Male-dominated, certainly. But I doubt that many would describe the direction of the tech world as increasingly driven by women from Ireland.

When I began my MSc in Digital Policy at University College Dublin, I was struck by the number of women who taught my courses. With backgrounds in the social sciences, these women work both in academia and in industry, sharing their expertise with institutions directly involved in shaping digital policy throughout Europe.

During one of my first weeks in university, I met with two of these professors to learn about their work. But instead of spending most of that hour listening, I spent most of it talking. My professors were invested in learning about my interests and perspectives in a way that left me feeling empowered to share my beliefs with others.

I had a similar experience a few weeks later speaking with a woman whose work has been instrumental in shaping data protection policy throughout Europe. In the interest of maintaining the confidentiality of our conversation, I won’t share who, but suffice to say I was slightly awestruck that I was able to speak with someone so instrumental to digital policy in Europe.

When our conversation began, I expected to sit quietly to learn about her work. But instead of spending most of that conversation listening, I, again, spent most of it talking. This very accomplished woman was interested in hearing my perspective on all things American tech policy. She even asked for my takes on the Digital Services Act and its content moderation strategy. Afterward, she connected me to other people working in her field so I could continue my conversations. With each introduction, she told them, “I think you’d learn a lot from Chloe.”

I’m not sure why these women expressed such respect for me and my perspective despite my being woefully under-qualified to share it with them. But I do know that spending time with these women has drastically increased my confidence in myself and my perspective on digital policy.

In the US, I’ve found conversations with connected industry and government professionals to be formal and hierarchical: it was clear that I was the student and they were the teacher. There is nothing wrong with this method, and it is often an important part of learning. Yet, this structure did not leave me feeling empowered to act on future challenges.

In contrast, my interactions with professors and technology policy professionals from Dublin helped nurture this confidence. And, seeing women in positions of leadership, sharing their perspectives on a typically male dominated field while earning the respect of their peers, has been inspiring for me. These meetings with professionals technology policy have been an invaluable part of my education and work in Dublin: because of them, I felt confident enough to reach out to nonprofits working in technology and advocacy to ask if I could volunteer on their projects, for example.

Ultimately, these women are shaping technology policy because they work in Dublin, where many technology companies hold their EU headquarters and where much of EU technology law is principally enforced. They are tackling new problems innovatively and leading the EU’s efforts to develop an international regulatory strategy for emerging technologies. Yet I think they are also shaping technology by spending their time nurturing the next generation of technology policy professionals. I am deeply grateful to them for inspiring my work and helping me grow into a better advocate for policy that can improve the online world for others.

Back in January, probably around the same time I posted my last blog, a few friends and I planted a circle of daffodils in Ormeau Park. Beside each bulb we placed folded pieces of paper with our dreams and intentions for the new year. Now I’m writing from a sunny cafe after checking their progress.

I truly cannot believe that this school year is almost over! Even though so much has happened and changed since September, it still feels so new, like I just arrived, and there’s so much more to come. Here are some highlights since I last blogged:

On February 1, my friend had a few of us over to make St. Brigid’s crosses. We picked the reeds from the marshy land around the River Lagan. It was really cool to learn more about St. Brigid, the patron saint of Ireland and poetry. What’s really interesting is that she pre-dates Christianity! She coincides with the pagan festival Imbolc.

On Valentine’s Day, my women’s music group held our first pub session at The Sunflower. We invited friends and any woman was allowed to join in and play. It ended up being a packed house and a truly magical night. This group is by far my favorite part of Belfast 🙂

I went to Edinburgh to visit my boyfriend Louis during reading week at the end of February. He was preparing for US tour and I was writing a script. We spent most days head down in the living room co-working, taking turns making coffee, lol. This is a pic of us getting out to enjoy a beautiful walk in Dean’s Village.

Ahhhh and here is Evie and I playing our original music at the International Women’s Day Folk Night. This is probably the most exciting seed sewn that’s already blooming. Evie and I met back in September through the Creative Writing MA, but we only started writing music together in January. Already, we have 7 songs and are working toward an album. Our band name is Wedding, because I’m from Westchester and she’s from Reading. Here’s a clip of us performing a new song called “Radial Time” :

I couldn’t be anymore grateful for Trina and the Mitchell Scholarship program for bringing these incredible opportunities into my life. While it does feel like a chapter is closing, I don’t see myself leaving Belfast right away. Between my job at Coup D’état and Wedding, I’m planning to stay at least for the summer to have fun and see how things grow.

Reading week is a bit of a misnomer because no one actually spends it reading but rather travelling instead. My reading week in this case took me to Dingle on the west coast of Ireland with a few friends. Known for the scenic views and coastal atmosphere, Dingle beckoned, and we answered by getting a small cottage on the water for a few days to get away from the hecticness of Dublin for a spell. The time away end up being the kind of break we were all sorely needing – even as a city boy myself, I can see the value in reconnecting with nature and having learned enough statistics and research design in my course for what could last me a lifetime, there was a special kind of thrill in getting to watch grazing sheep instead of bustling students outside my window.

However, jokes aside, there’s genuinely something in getting to see Ireland’s beauty yourself and discovering your own role of it. While driving through the Ring of Kerry rounding sharp turns and vast expanses of hills and lakes, I unexpectedly began to feel quite small. I know objectively too that Ireland itself is a very small country – I mean, I had literally driven to the other side of it in approximately four hours. Yet in that moment as I watched my friend drive stick (baffling me, who has never even come close to learning how to do so) and sat squished in our tiny red mobile with all of us packed in like a clown car it felt almost larger than any place I had ever been. I look around at my friends and I realize that these people who were total strangers mere months ago have now become trusted confidants, partners in crime, and fundamentally people I will take with me even after I myself have gone.  

 If I’m being entirely candid, I’m aware my time here is coming to a close – there’s only a few months before it’s back to the States and the beginning of the next chapter with med school. With my mind moving a million hours a minute, I’ve been trying to take the rest of this experience for every part of what it’s worth. This is an admirable goal no doubt, but also frankly a somewhat exhausting one. Knowing you’re leaving just to start over again is as exciting as it is bittersweet. This will be the sixth year in a row I’ll be starting someplace new. And so being able to just relish in feeling insignificant in the daunting faces of high peaks and the slippery slopes of flowing water for a moment felt a genuine relief. I feel like there’s oftentimes a certain exerted pressure to show to others that you’ve done what you set out to and that that sentiment can only reveal itself in demonstrative and almost grandiose displays; I went here, saw this, pictured that. Maybe this blog post is even guilty of that, in a way. But even if just briefly, my time in Dingle let me remember that it’s not a bad thing to feel small sometimes – if anything, it’s a necessary one. Albeit cliché, it serves as a reminder that who we are – goals, worries, opinions – exist within a broader context that’s easy to overlook.

The Mitchell was never something I expected – I applied as a senior in college and didn’t even make it past the first round. But I can see now that that made sense because I’m not the same person I was when I first applied – I’m older (although who’s to say on the wiser part), in a different line of work, with far more life experience under my belt. I don’t think I would have gotten what I needed from this year and the support of the program at 23 because that version of myself feels almost uncertain and unrecognizable at points. I’m grateful to Ireland for reminding me of second chances, sure, but more so that sometimes it’s less of a second chance and more so waiting and shifting until you’re ready. This year has given me an experience I never thought I would have. As someone who feels perpetually in hurry, I think my time here has made me more ready for what’s to come. And I will remember sitting in a tiny car in the middle of Kerry with too loud music and jostling friends whenever the world feels too big and is in need of a reminder of when and why and how to be small.

This Spring I completed my goal of visiting every park in Dublin city center. To commemorate this journey, I went out and shot a roll of black and white film at ten of my favorite Dublin parks. There’s a few classics in here, but I mostly focused on hidden gems and parks with unusual stories. Hope you guys enjoy 🙂

^shot on Fomapan 400 35mm

Notes:

• This project only features parks and neighborhoods north of the Grand Canal and south of the Royal Canal. It’s impossible (and controversial) to define where “Core Dublin” begins and ends, but the canals are a neutral natural boundary. Where the Grand Canal branches off in Rialto, I’ve drawn an imaginary line running North along R111, right where Kilmainham meets the Irish Museum of Modern Art. This imaginary border extends straight up until it meets the Royal Canal in Cabra. Anything within these bounds is fair game.
• I’ve excluded Stephen’s Green and Phoenix Park from this project. You don’t need to hear me yap about Dublin’s most famous parks. Go look them up on Lonely Planet or something…

South of the Liffey

1. Iveagh Gardens

There’s an otherworldly magic about Iveagh Gardens. It’s roughly the size of a city block, and barely half a mile from the hustle and bustle of Grafton Street and Stephen’s Green- but you’d never notice this park unless you went looking for it. Iveagh Gardens is basically an oversized courtyard, surrounded by a block of red-brick Georgian townhouses. In the 18th and 19th centuries it belonged to the 1st Earl of Clonmell, serving as his private cloister gardens. Today it’s a public park, but is only accessible through three little gated stone archways, one nestled in between the exterior buildings on each side. The Park’s interior matches the whimsical mystery of this discovery process- crumbling stone statues dot a carefully manicured central lawn, and tucked away in corners of the gardens, down hidden footpaths, surprises await- a rose garden, a waterfall, a hedge maze leading to a bronze sundial. The whole place has a sense of eerie tranquility, evocative of Alice’s Wonderland or the Garden of Eden.

2. St. Kevin’s Park

To me, St. Kevin’s Park is a microcosm of “Dublinness”. It sits on the ruins of a little old churchyard. Headstones from the graveyard have been removed from the ground and lined up along the churchyard walls. In spring, orange and pink roses bloom on vines hanging over the tombstones and on bushes groping wildly out of the windows of the ruined church. Plaques around the park relate the proud history of the parish. But the park’s stately sense of history rubs shoulders with another Dublin plotline: St. Kevin’s is a popular retreat for drug users and Dublin’s growing homeless population. Little details tell this story: cigarette butts and crack pipes under rose bushes, a nylon sleeping bag tucked behind an 18th century headstone. The park is overall very clean and inviting, but you start to notice those details as your eyes adjust. For me, the juxtaposition of these elements is moving- People of all walks of life share these park benches. Over a century after the parish church closed, its spirit lives on, because all peoples have identified St. Kevin’s as a place of respite and peace. And respite and peace ought to be universal human rights. The alleys surrounding St. Kevin’s Park are some of the most heavily graffitied in City Center, but the park remains largely untouched- a testament to the sanctity it still exudes.

3. Rialto Greenway

Is this even a park? I dunno. Just north of the roundabout in the quaint neighborhood of Rialto, a wooded trail connects the town square to the Grand Canal (about half a mile North). What charms me about this little green belt is its unexpectedness and uncanniness. 

Regarding unexpectedness– A lot of Dublin’s best green spaces are little pockets that you just stumble upon, unmarked on the map. This place is clearly very important to the people of Rialto- it’s a well-worn trail- but you’d never know that until you came to the neighborhood to explore with an open mind. There’s a lesson in that somewhere. 

Regarding uncanniness– Something here is a bit odd. Elements of infrastructure and nature come together in a way that gives the park the feel of a surreal dream. It is a long, narrow park, seemingly secluded- but every ten minutes, the red line LUAS runs right through the middle on a track installed directly in the grass, shattering this illusion of quiet intimacy. Follow the LUAS towards the end of the greenway, and you’ll come to a bridge, under which a single iron ladder offers swimming access to the Grand Canal.

4. Pearse Square Park

I need to be more concise, or I’ll never finish this article. Fortunately, there’s not much profound to say about this one. I think Pearse Square Park is the platonic ideal of a small Dublin park. Tucked away off Lower Pearse Street, it is cute, clean, well-maintained and planted with beautiful flowers, but not too showy. It is nestled snugly between rows of adorable townhouses, is a little hard to find your way into, and of course, features a cryptic central statue. In other words, it checks all the boxes. The thing I like about Pearse Square, and this area of Southeast Dublin as a whole, is the palpable sense that you’re approaching the sea. The air tastes a little bit saltier, the buildings are getting a little bit shorter, and you get the sense that Dublin Bay is just over the horizon.

5. Fitzwilliam Square

I am not allowed into Fitzwilliam Square. An air of bourgeois mystery surrounds it. The wrought-iron gates are usually closed, and the park’s perimeter is planted with trees and dense shrubbery to obscure passerby’s view inside. A sign on the gate says “This is a private community garden. Applications for membership welcomed! To enquire, email ********@gmail.com.

I emailed ********@gmail.com and did not receive a response.

6. Merrion Square Park

I didn’t have enough film to extensively shoot all of my favorite parks, but I had some room at the end of my roll for just a couple pics of Merrion Square. This is probably the third most famous and popular Dublin park, so it doesn’t really need my attention. What I appreciate about Merrion Square is how its landscape design differs from the nearby Stephens Green. To me, Merrion Square feels more like an NYC park, with a more nonchalant and organic approach to its design reminiscent of American ideals of green spaces. It’s a reminder that parks aren’t just “wild spaces” we’ve preserved, devoid of social and ideological baggage. Urban parks in particular are illuminating reflections of our attitudes on what nature “should” look like. In the case of Stephen’s Green, its deliberate, ornate, geometric design is likely a reflection of classic English notions of the pleasure garden or pleasing prospect: where the carefully manicured country estate is seen as the highest reflection of “natural” beauty. I think the aesthetics of Stephen’s Green are also evocative of the late Victorian period in which it was founded. Then again, Merrion Square is older, and doesn’t reflect that same sense of elaborate design. So what makes it feel more “open” and “wild”? It’s something to look into further.

7. People, Parks, Poverty, etc.

This one isn’t a park, it’s a sidebar for discussion. Tricked you…

I originally conceived this blog post as a Buzzfeed-style ranking: “Owen’s TOP 10 Dublin Parks!” or something of the like. But like I said before, parks carry socioeconomic baggage, and I realized that my “Top 10 Parks” list was turning into a “Top 10 Richest Neighborhoods of Dublin” list. And at that point, it was no longer a story about Dublin- it was a story about Southeast Dublin. We admire parks for their beauty, but beauty is money, and to an extent, beauty is proportional to the classed agency to seclude your park from the world in a place where the “wrong kind of people” can’t find it. Furthermore, we also admire parks for their “tranquility”, but in some of these Southeast Dublin parks, tranquility is reflective of emptiness, and that in turn is reflective of inaccessibility. Parks should be for people. And indeed, on the working-class North Side of Dublin, most of its parks aren’t ornately manicured- but they are almost always bustling. These green spaces are beloved and well-used, and the most beloved ones stay clean and tidy, just like the fancy-pants South Side parks. Because when people see themselves as “belonging” to a park, having a stake in it, they take care of it. And that’s an important lesson with larger ramifications for other social institutions. Sometimes, a park falls through the cracks- there is no rich philanthropist or tax base supporting its upkeep, and no working-class kinship to the space protecting it. When this happens, you get something like Oisin Kelly Park in the Liberties- a carcass.

One more thing I wanted to address- parks are about people. My photos are largely devoid of humanity. If I’m not careful, my biases for empty, idyllic landscapes will also creep in. But that’s not the real issue- the main reason I don’t take pictures of people in parks is that I’m too scared! I’m a baby! It takes a lot of confidence to walk up to a mother and say “Can I take pictures of your kids playing?” without sounding like a creep. One day I’ll muster up the courage to start taking portraits and action shots. For now, here’s a couple moments of humanity from a distance.

Is secretly photographing people from far away weirder than asking to take their photo? I feel like it might be worse. Oops…

North of the Liffey

8. Garden of Remembrance

Another space that raises the ontological question of “Is this a park?”. I say this because the Garden of Remembrance contains almost no greenery- just water, concrete, and a few flowers. Do parks need to have grass? Is a park just an outdoor gathering space- or is living biomass an essential part of the definition?

The Garden of Remembrance was opened in 1966, the semi centennial of the Easter Rising, as a memorial to “all those who gave their lives in the cause of Irish Freedom”. I find its long reflecting pool, tiled with mosaics of lapping waves and Viking symbols, particularly strange and captivating. And the Children of Lir monument at the end of the Garden is an awe-inspiring memorial  to Republican martyrdom. It was designed by none other than Oisin Kelly- the namesake of the abandoned park in the last section. When you build a monument to martyred Irishmen, upon your death, they won’t be around to build a fitting monument to you.

9. Chancery Park

We’re almost to the end now, so let’s lighten the mood a bit by celebrating my favorite micro-park in Dublin- Chancery Park. I think this might be the smallest park between the canals? It’s roughly the size of my rich friend’s living room. The park’s centerpiece is a beautiful little wrought-iron fountain adorned with three little heron statuettes. On the far end of the park sits a small maintenance shed affixed with vaguely art-deco lettering and designs. Why art deco? Why the herons? Why is this park barely twenty feet wide? I don’t know, and I don’t care to know. It’s more magical that way.

10. Blessington Street Park

I saved the best for last. Blessington Street Park is my favorite park in Dublin. While it may not be objectively as beautiful as the Iveagh Gardens, unlike the Iveagh Gardens, it is a true hidden gem. Like many of Dublin’s best parks, it is innocuous and unnoticeable from the roadside. Tucked away in the far Northeast of the city center, Blessington Street Park surrounds a pond called the Blessington Street Basin, a former 19th century drinking water reservoir. These days, the reservoir is a small sanctuary for waterfowl, with the greatest species diversity in any Dublin park between the canals. The basin is ringed by a stone walkway, with a variety of tropical plants planted along the water’s edge. A quaint little cottage is nestled in one corner of the park, and at the far end of the basin, a green wooden door set in a tall stone wall leads back out into the city…

I’m getting off the bus soon, so no time to write a conclusion…

The End. 🙂

I recently had the opportunity to take a rapid trip to Tromso, Norway, to attempt to check off a lifelong bucket list item—seeing the northern lights. The outlook was poor, no solar storms incoming and thick snow and cloud cover for the entire trip. We had booked a bus tour out to a dark part of the country for the night, and they had promised to chase the clear whether to give us the best chances of seeing the norther lights as possible. There, standing in the dark, for four hours, in the dead of winter in the Arctic Circle, there was no amount of layers or handwarmers that could keep the cold from seeping into my bones. Despite the poor forecasts and unlikely solar events, there, near midnight next to a frozen lake, the skies opened up, and spectacular dancing lights spread across the sky. A bright green curtain of light shifted and shimmered in ways that seemed lifelike, it was like nothing I had ever seen before, and it took my frozen breath away.

This was the trip that I had planned. I had gotten lucky, and I was able to fulfill the purpose of my trip in just the way that I had imagined. I did not, however, plan another one exploits of my trip to Norway. On a whim, I found a place where you could swim in the Tromso harbor and then relax in a sauna on the dock. For reference, the water in the harbor was a nice and cool 5 degrees Celsius. It seemed like a good idea when I was booking it, but standing in only my swimming trunks in the snow in the dark, it was very little comfort to me to know that the water was, technically, warmer than the air. I went on this trip with three other Mitchell scholars, and it would have been easy to, at any point, suggest that maybe jumping into ice cold water in the arctic circle wasn’t a good idea. At the very least, we could have enjoyed a nice, relaxing hour in the sauna without shocking the nerve endings with a frigid swim.

Yet, as I was walking to the ladder on the dock, I made one resolution in my mind—be the first one in the water. I figured that as long as I didn’t have time to think about my decision, I couldn’t chicken out. It didn’t matter how unpleasant it was, how cold I became, or how much I was dreading the experience. If I didn’t give myself the time to think about the decision, I didn’t have any time to doubt it. So, as I marched to the ladder, bare feet in the snow, I started down and didn’t stop until my entire head was submerged in the water. It was shocking. It was the type of cold that just immediately sucks all the heat from your body. My heart immediately began racing and I couldn’t scramble out of the water fast enough. It was an incredible experience.

In a way, I considered my last six months as a whole. From an outside perspective, it is a little shocking to think that I agreed to live in a country that I had never been to and hardly knew anything about—not to mention that was an ocean apart from anyone I had every known. Yet, the last six months have been some of the best of my life. I’ve had the opportunity to do and see things I would have never even considered. I’ve traveled and seen new parts of the world, tried new food, made Irish friends and taken part in traditions and engaged in culture that I would have never otherwise been made privy. My worldview has expanded, and I’ve come to appreciate Ireland and the people here in ways I don’t think I would have ever been able to as a tourist. In fact, I feel like each passing day makes me appreciate Ireland more as a second home.

The couple of months have been particularly turbulent in my life, so, I decided to shake things up. Whether the consequences are better or worse, I knew things needed to change. I figured that if I tried something with a negative effect, I could work on fixing it, and if I tried something with a positive effect, things would be great. Either way, I knew things couldn’t stay the same as they had been.

Over the last six months I’ve made efforts to try new things, to integrate into the Cork community, and to be more engaged in the world around me—whether or not it falls into my plans. As a result, I’ve found myself growing as a person, becoming, bit by bit, better in my own way. I even recently took a solo trip to Edinburgh (I promise I’ve been going to class too). I’ve become comfortable with traveling, but I’ve never done it entirely alone, and frankly, the idea of it scared me. Yet, I booked the tickets before I could talk myself out of it. I walked around, took tours, and went to restaurants by myself. I talked to strangers, and saw some strange sights, including some sculptures of giant horse heads bursting from the ground. I didn’t know how it would go, and I didn’t have a plan before I went, but I ended up having a good time—albeit different than if I would have gone with friends.

I ended up taking a dip in the frigid waters of the harbor several times that evening in Tromso—even doing full cannon-balls by the time I left. The combination of the cold waters making my entire body numb combined with thawing out in the sauna was a unique and wonderful experience. I’ve come to appreciate the fact that we can so often, and easily, talk ourselves out of potentially great experiences. I’m glad that I took the plunge into coming to Ireland, going to Edinburgh, and into the cold waters. If I had considered things more careful, I don’t think I would have taken a chance on any of those things, yet, I’ve had a better life for them. For better or for worse, I think it pays to take a chance.

Over the course of 6 days in February, I walked 128 kilometers of the Camino de Santiago—a famous trail leading to the shrine of the apostle James in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, established at the beginning of the 9th century. The Camino is a historically religious pilgrimage and is described by many modern-day “pilgrims” as a life-changing, deeply spiritual experience. It didn’t take long for me to understand why.

In the days leading up to my flight to Spain, I purchased a hiking backpack and Merino wool socks and listened to countless podcast episodes detailing other travelers’ Camino experiences. I had very high hopes for the trip, but I didn’t know what to expect. At the very least, I figured it’d be a nice walk. Instead, it was like stepping into another life.

Unlike other trips I’ve been on, I didn’t feel like a tourist briefly catching a glimpse of a new place. Instead, I felt totally immersed. Every day, I woke up before sunrise and walked until my feet ached, guided by bright blue signs marked with golden scallop shells—the symbol of the Camino. The scenery changed slowly around me as I climbed hills, crossed bridges, and passed through villages. In the afternoons and evenings, I’d explore the cities I landed in. Each place had its own distinct character. Baiona was the most stunningly serene coastal town I’ve ever seen, whereas Vigo was surprisingly metropolitan. At night, I slept in hostels on disposable sheets.

One of my favorite moments was sitting in a sunny, historic courtyard in Pontevedra with a glass of red wine. I sat there with the sun warming my face for ages, feeling like time had slowed to a near stop. Throughout the entire trip, I felt incredibly present and relaxed. I couldn’t help but wonder how I could recapture that feeling in my daily life.

Pilgrims walking the Camino de Santiago carry “Camino passports” and collect stamps (sellos) from the places they visit along the way. When my passport arrived in the mail, it came with a little card with a “Prayer on Arrival in Santiago” printed on it. My favorite part went like this:

“As we return home, give us courage to live in the spirit of the Camino.”

This was a very special trip to me, for a lot of reasons. But, overall, I think it gave me a sense of peace, freedom, and adventure unlike anything I’ve felt before. I hope I can continue to live in the spirit of the Camino this year, and onwards.

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A few sounds from the trip:

If I spent my first four months in Belfast doing everything I could to learn its layout, customs, and history, I’ve spent the last three attempting to translate that knowledge—admittedly still limited, but growing—to other American outsiders. In January, my partner flew from New Jersey to stay with me. At the beginning of February, two high-school friends made the trip from Washington, D.C. Later that month, the Mitchells came up from the south for an action-packed weekend. And just recently, in a bizarre and unfortunate turn of events, my college roommates found themselves in the city while I was away visiting PhD programs.

At first I thought it would be easy to put together a visitor itinerary. But as I reflected on what exactly I like to do in Belfast, I realized that the list was decidedly unsexy. Sometimes I hang out at the Linen Hall Library or the MAC; sometimes I hang out at Maddens. Occasionally I walk up the Falls to hang out at Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich or across the Lagan to hang out at PRONI. Mostly, I just hang out. To be sure, I’m something of a wet blanket, and so my routine is bound to be rather tame. But to me, there’s nothing at all mundane about this city. I’m reminded constantly of my hometown of Pittsburgh—an ocean away, politically and culturally distinct, but rhythmically similar. Both here and there, it’s as if deindustrialization slowed the tempo but left the time signature the same. Belfast, like home, is paradise for the creature of habit. It’s the sort of place where everything is always a fifteen-minute walk away, where the locals have been local their whole lives, where where the same folks turn up in the same haunts day after day.

Paradise for the creature of habit is not necessarily paradise for the tourist. Whenever people come to Pittsburgh for the first time, I make a joke of the city’s unofficial motto, “America’s most livable city.” Livable, not visit-able. It’s not that there’s a shortage of exhilarating things to do (though at times that’s the case). Rather, it’s just not a city whose essence can be grasped through a series of discrete museum tours and restaurant reservations. It needs to be lived in. I think much the same could be said of Belfast. My favorite cafés and pubs aren’t my favorites because they’re better than the others, but because they’ve grown familiar; they’re part of what it means for me to have a life here.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t visit, of course. You can learn a hell of a lot about this place from an afternoon at the Ulster Museum or the Irish Republican History Museum, the Botanic Gardens are very pretty (utterly barren rose garden notwithstanding), and Ginger Bistro is top notch (albeit on the pricier side). But it’s always a bummer when my friends have to leave here after only a few days, because I know they’re missing the intangible charm of getting to know Belfast over the long haul.

The past few weeks have been an absolute whirlwind. It feels as if things are moving far too quickly for me to even stop and reflect. So I’m grateful for the opportunity these blog posts provide in forcing me to take some time to look back on everything that’s happened in the past few months.

It’s dawned on me that after this year, I will not be going back to school for the foreseeable future. I have therefore made a special effort to take advantage of all the opportunities I get as a student at Trinity. One of the things I’m the most grateful for is the opportunity to do active field work. My course actually took a trip to do some field work in Amsterdam, in early March. During our visit there, which lasted about a week, we were able to meet with various urban planners, architects, biodiversity experts, landscaping experts, social housing coordinators, transportation engineers, grassroot activists, housing cooperatives, artists—so many people who, through uncoordinated, decentralized action and conflicting theories of change, paradoxically come together to create this experience of the city that we call Amsterdam. I had visited Amsterdam as a tourist before and while I really enjoyed my earlier visits, interrogating the city from a planning and urban geography perspective really helped me to comprehend the city and think more critically about what makes the city work, and for whom, and the politics behind who is given a chance to shape the city.

I have come to realize that it is a fallacy to believe that, as per the utopian theory of urbanism, prosocial behavior of a city’s populace can be physically built into daily life through a city’s infrastructure. Instead, a city thrives and nurtures culture and community when citizens actively participate in their communities. As inhabitants of a place, it is politically and intellectually lazy to rely on being passively shaped by the built environment into acting better. To be sure, there are certain steps that urban planners can take with the physical to ensure that people have accessibly mobility and third spaces that foster community. Yet there is a limit to what the built environment can do to facilitate prosocial behavior, and from that limit onwards, inhabitants themselves must make an active choice. I witnessed that active participation in Amsterdam through the grassroots organizations that physically built their own neighborhoods, reclaimed land, developed innovative bioremediation techniques to clean a formerly polluted area. And the tension that exists between top-down city planning approaches by transportation engineers, power system engineers, city government officials and the inhabitants who are actively participating in their city will never be resolved. That tension is inherent in being an active participant, but that tension is also what drives and generates culture and innovation and a sense of fulfillment, a sense of ownership over the city. I’m very grateful to the experience that Trinity provided me to witness a totally novel way of conceptualizing what it means to live in a city.

Other than school, I have also been very fortunate to explore further around Ireland. This past weekend, my older sister and her fiancée were able to visit me. It was their first time in Ireland and so I showed them around parts of Dublin, including the Museum of Literature, the Museum of Archaeology, and some of my favorite pubs, such as Fidelity Bar and the Long Hall, which has a James Joyce award for being an authentic Irish public house. We also took the train west to Galway, where we stayed for a night before continuing further west towards Clifton, a small town nestled between the Connemara mountains. I had the best pint of Guinness I’ve ever had in my life at a local pub, washed down with some phenomenal fish and chips. In that pub in Clifton, where my sister and her fiancée were looking at me incredulously as I sidled up to the bar and bantered with the bartender before ordering my pint, I realized that I do feel much more at home here compared to last September.

With the foil of my sister, I could observe that I have changed—perhaps not indelibly—I move through certain Irish spaces with much more confidence and even a sense of familiarity now that I have hours under my belt watching comedians and pub crawling with my course mates, leafing through books in the countless bookstores around Dublin, and training with the running club at Trinity. This is true even in parts of Ireland I haven’t yet spent time in, such as Clifden: they do not feel as alien to me as I would have thought.

The next morning, we were up early to hike around the Twelve Bens in Connemara National Park. We scrabbled past some dizzying drops, sunk knee-deep into mud, scared far too many sheep, and came face-to-face with sheer rocky mountains bursting out of the bog. As I stood on one of the peaks we had reached, vertigo suddenly struck me as the landscape unfolded beyond my peripheral vision, on, on, past the seam of the horizon. It all looked so planetary. It looked extraterrestrial. And yet not too far in the distance, I did see the roofs of Clifton and that sense of familiarity came rushing back to me.

I started long-distance running in 2020 and set out with a friend to complete the Six World Major Marathons. Over the last three and a half years, we ran the 2021 New York Marathon, 2022 Boston Marathon, 2022 Chicago Marathon, 2023 Berlin Marathon, and 2024 London Marathon. So, when I received lottery entry to run the 2025 Tokyo Marathon, I knew I couldn’t pass up the special opportunity to complete the final of the world major marathons. Over the last three months, I’ve been training with Ulster University Sports Service to prepare for the race. I’ve now run hundreds of miles all across Belfast (and Dublin), and I wanted to use this blog post to rank my favorite long run trails in Beal Feirste!

#1 Lagan Towpath through the Lagan Valley Area of Natural Outstanding Beauty

From my student accommodation on York Street, I run to the Lagan River, passing the Big Fish statue and then continuing along the riverside trail. I cross the Ormeau Road and pass Queen’s University then soon enter the part of the trail where the Belfast cityscape fades into wilderness. This is where the path becomes most beautiful, and I begin to run on auto-pilot, not having to worry about crossing traffic intersections or avoiding road construction. Depending on how long I’m looking to run, I’ll usually turn back on this trail around the halfway point of my target mileage. The farthest I’ve ran along this trail is about 11 miles for my 21-mile training run, but I believe it continues on through Lisburn well beyond that point. Some highlights of the trail include seeing all of the ducks, magpies, swans, and swallows, plus a wild assortment of bird nests clustered in a few trees (pictured below).

#2 Upper Newtownards Road to Stormont Estate

This trail takes me along the Upper Newtownards Road through East Belfast until I arrive at Stormont Estate. From my student accommodation, I cross over the Lagan River and continue until I reach the Upper Newtownards Road. I pass a number of loyalist murals until I am mainly running in a residential area. When I get to the gates of Stormont Estate, this is where the most difficult stretch of the run commences as I proceed to run the mile-long steady uphill path to the front steps of the Parliamentary Buildings. The hardest part of the hill is the last ~400m where the incline drastically increases!

#3 Crumlin Road towards Cavehill and back down Antrim Road

This is a lovely trail, but the difficulty of running in North or West Belfast is how many traffic intersections you encounter plus the nearly consistent uphill/downhill running. Especially for long runs, I prefer mostly flat trails as it puts less stress on my knees and quads. Nonetheless, this is a beautiful run that offers great views of Cavehill. From my student accommodation, I run west until I connect with the Crumlin Road. I run along the Crumlin Road past Crumlin Road Gaol until I determine a good crossing point, either along Ballysillan Road or before, and then head northeast until I connect with the Antrim Road and then run back south towards city centre. My favorite detour along this trail is the path around the Waterworks along the Antrim Road. A bit elevated from the road, this short loop offers great views of Cavehill.

2025 Tokyo Marathon!

On the weekend of March 2^nd, I flew to Tokyo and completed the 2025 Tokyo Marathon! Although the race day weather was a bit hot (it got close to 70 degrees towards the end of the race), it was an incredible experience finishing the race and receiving my Six Star Medal. It was also particularly special to represent Ulster University Sports Services on race day. Many thanks to Ruth and Poddy, trainers from UU Sports Services, for their support throughout training!

In 2015, I met my friend Kiley while working at the Bryn Mawr dining hall. I’m a New Yorker and she’s a New Jerseyan – it was love at first sight. Over the past ten years, we’ve never lived in the same place, yet we’ve always remained close. After Bryn Mawr, we both landed in Massachusetts—me in Boston, her in Cambridge. A few years later, we transitioned to the DMV—me in Baltimore, her in Washington, D.C. And when I found out I was moving to Dublin for the Mitchell, she learned she was heading to Cambridge, U.K. for work. In a stroke of pure serendipity, we’ve somehow spent the last five years living no more than an hour apart.

A few months ago, I visited her in Cambridge, exploring antique shops and graveyards. Soon, she’ll take the short flight to see me in Ireland. It’s made me realize something I hadn’t expected—despite moving across an ocean, those closest to me have remained just that: close.

Friends & Family Who Have Visited Me 

My first visitor in Ireland was Gabrielle, my partner, who generously helped me move into my dorm. Since then, she’s visited twice more—and she’ll be back one last time to help me move out (yes, she’s an angel!). Together we have explored Galway, Ireland’s vintage stores, and the Dublin Zoo. In the fall, my cousin Ariadne and I visited the Cliffs of Moher in torrential rain and wind, stopped by Phoenix park to catch a glimpse of the deer, and toured Kilmainham Gaol. It was our first time having a sleepover since we were kids.

In December, my high school friend Margaret visited, and on a whim, we took a trip to Edinburgh, where we spent far too much money on paperback books we definitely didn’t have space for in our luggage. In Dublin we visited St Stephen’s Green, and enjoyed beef & Guinness stew. This month, my cousins Stacey and Vasoula brought my nephew Luca to visit, treated me to a stay in a haunted inn, and drove me to Cork so we could kiss the Blarney stone.

Most recently, my twin sister Christina decided to spend her spring break with me. After checking out the Irish Emigration Museum, today we explored Wicklow, watched a sheepdog demonstration and held baby lambs. Before I leave, I expect to welcome at least a few more friends. Having visitors has been the best excuse to step away from my laptop, take time off from work, and explore this beautiful island.

I originally assumed moving to Ireland would mean sacrificing my relationships in order to build new ones here. Little did I know, I had nothing to worry about.

In the past, I’ve always felt most comfortable as a written reporter, not as an audio or visual journalist. I grew up loving to read and write, and it was my passion for rhythm, lyricism, and syntax that led me to journalism. But my Mitchell year has pushed me to expand my reporting skills by experimenting with other mediums; this semester, in particular, I’ve enjoyed working on video projects for my Television and Broadcast class.

One of our key projects this semester is to create a live television newsday. That means producing a 12-minute television program that includes live headlines, presenter segments, stories about local news in Limerick, and even a weather forecast. Our entire masters group of about twenty five people has been hard at work on this project, with each person taking on a specific role. I’ve been appointed the “desk editor,” or the editor in chief of the project, which sounds more glamorous than it is. In practice, my role is to assign specific stories to our journalist teams, provide feedback on their work, and coordinate between various staff members — I think I’m in a dozen WhatsApp groups for this! This project has certainly been a challenging experiment in leadership and teamwork, but it’s also been a familiar and welcome process — a throwback to my time as an editor for my student newspaper at Duke, where I had to oversee student staff members and perform many similar tasks.

One of the best parts of being involved in this project is the opportunity to explore local issues in Limerick through the eyes of our journalist teams. We are covering a variety of topics relevant to this city, including the growing popularity of the sport of padel in Limerick, a new theater production put on by UL’s theater society, and the planned expansion of a greenway for cyclists in the city.

Developing these stories has enabled me to pay closer attention to Limerick and its people. That causal connection between reporting and heightened attention is part of why I originally wanted to become a journalist, and why I continue to love this particular, often peculiar work. The meticulous work of reporting encompasses many tasks — observing, recording, empathizing, interrogating — but, I think, at its most fundamental level, it is about the art of paying attention. It’s about developing a type of intimate, sustained knowledge that is, in a way, a kind of devotion, a form of love. As I once wrote in a column for my student newspaper, “Care for a place or a person demands that we slow down to look and see.”

Looking and seeing. That’s how I’ve spent much of my time as a journalist in Limerick, trying in small ways to become the type of writer who closely attends to the world around me. After all, I can only take readers on paths I myself have trodden, to sights I have seen and savored, to the places I have once inhabited. One of my favorite passages on writing comes from Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Message, in which he figuratively positions the writer as a person standing at the edge of a forest tasked with creating a map of that area. “The figure is you, the writer, an idea in hand, notes scribbled on loose-leaf, maybe an early draft of an outline. But to write, to draw that map, to pull us into the wilderness, you cannot merely stand at the edge. You have to walk the land. You have to see the elevation for yourself, the color of the soil. You have to discover that the ravine is really a valley and that the stream is in fact a river winding south from a glacier in the mountains.”

If there’s one thing this year in Limerick has taught me, it’s that reporting and writing — and dare I say, all of life — can never be fully realized when you are simply standing at the edge of the wilderness. You have to see the thing and live it. You have to dip your hands in the stream. You have to walk the land.

My documentary for my final project at Dublin City University is at full force. The production mode is on, with the topic of the film focusing on the advocates against Direct Provision in Ireland. With the first preliminary interviews done, we are focusing on the two sides of the story, of people who control the changes in Direct Provision and the promises made, along with those who experience it directly and the reality of the system.

*Direct provision is the name used to describe the accommodation, food, money and medical services you get while your international protection application is being assessed or while you are an asylum seeker. It can take from 10 months to 10 years for the system to process your application.

While exploring artists in Dublin for my Documentary Photography class, I came across Pottery painting studio and couldn’t resist painting a tea pot. After a long wait for it to be fired, I finally had it in my hands and hosted my first tea party with my friends!

On recent trips we had a trip to Belfast with Mitchell Scholars on a visit with US Consul General. With a political murals tour, stunning architecture and a warm welcome and reception with the US advisors to Ireland, it was a phenomenal trip filled with stories and laughter! On the last day, I went to Titanic Museum, and it was pouring rain the whole day with strong winds that swept your feet. It truly made you feel like you yourself are about to experience the Titanic.

Happy Maslenitsa, in Russia we celebrate spring with crepes and deserts. Traditionally eaten the first week of march with sour cream, jams, honey, or condensed milk. But spring arrived in Dublin with sunshine and coffees on terraces of cafes- long walks on the beaches of Ireland and reading books in parks is now an everyday occurrence.

For plans for the future, this is the prime time to focus on the future dreams and goals. Applications’ review is in full swing, with nervous waiting and at the same time the enjoyment of every second spent in Ireland. I am so grateful for the Mitchell’s program and how it showed me this beautiful country with rich history, stunning landscapes and people that stay in your heart forever!