Our people

Dr Matthew Ryan

National School of Arts and Humanities

Areas of expertise: Irish literature; literary and cultural theory; dystopian and utopian literature; creative nonfiction writing

HDR Supervisor accreditation status: Provisionally accredited supervisor

ORCID ID: 0000-0003-4510-6514

Email: [email protected]

Location: ACU Melbourne Campus

My research considers the ways in which contemporary writing presents and contributes to the constitution of self in relation to place, social and environmental circumstances and to more attenuated - national and transnational - forms of sociality and polity. I focus my research on the ways contemporary novels and short stories negotiate this set of relations. I have specialised in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Irish writing but have extended my consideration to other contemporary literatures such as dystopian writing.

I have supervised a wide variety of student research projects to successful completion at Honours, Masters, and Doctoral levels.

Publications

Edited books

• Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique(eds) Matthew Ryan and Simon Sellars, Issue 17, August, 2009
• Demanding the Impossible: Utopia and Dystopia (eds) Andrew Milner, Matthew Ryan, Simon Sellars, Arena Publications, 2008.
• Imagining the Future: Utopia and Dystopia (eds) Andrew Milner, Matthew Ryan, Robert Savage, Arena Publications, 2006.

Journal articles and book chapters

• ‘Changing view: time and place in Sara Baume’s Seven Steeples’ Textual Practice, 1–19, org/10.1080/0950236X.2026.2666191, 2026
• ‘“News gets to you”: an interview with Paul Murray’ The Australasian Journal of Irish Studies, vol 24, 2024.
• 'Uses for ruins: Anne Enright's The Green Road' Textual Practice,35:1, DOI: 1080/0950236X.2019.1652678, 2021.
• 'Place, History and Story: Tony Birch and the Yarra River' with Carolyn Masel, Australian Literary Studies, 31:2, 2016
• 'Popular Culture: pessimism and hope' Arena Journal, no.45/46 2016.
• 'Art, Utopia and the Aestheticized Self' Arena Journal, no.39/40, 2012-13.
• 'What am I like?: Writing the Body and the Self' in Anne Enright: Irish Writers in Their Time(eds) Claire Bracken, Susan Cahill, Irish Academic Press, 2011.
• 'Hope is Critical: Cormac McCarthy's The Road' in Demanding the Impossible: Utopia and Dystopia (eds) Andrew Milner, Matthew Ryan, Simon Sellars, Arena Publications, 2008.
• 'Abstract Homes: Deterritorialisation and Reterritorialisation in the work of Colm Tóibín' Irish Studies Review, no.16, vol.1, 2008.
• 'Solipsism as Cultural Condition: Some recent Irish Examples' Arena Journal,27, 2006.
• 'Vanguards and Avant-gardes: The Reason in Revolt Online Project on Political and Cultural Radicalism' Simon Booth, Verity Burgmann, Stuart Macintyre, Andrew Milner and Matthew Ryan, The Past is before Us: Proceedings of the 9th Annual Labour History Conference, University of Sydney, 2005.
• 'Ourselves Alone: Solipsism in Neil Jordan's Novels and Films' Barcelona English Language and Literature Studies, no.11, 2000.
• 'A Postmodern Ireland?' Arena Journal, no.11, 1998.

Appointments and affiliations

• Secretary of Irish Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand (ISAANZ)
• Member of International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL)

Public engagement

• ‘Changing view: time and place in Sara Baume’s Seven Steeples’ Textual Practice, 1–19, org/10.1080/0950236X.2026.2666191, 2026
• ‘“News gets to you”: an interview with Paul Murray’ The Australasian Journal of Irish Studies, vol 24, 2024.
• 'Time Together', Scroll Magazine, 2022
• 'The Rooney Effect' Scroll Magazine, 2021
• 'For years, I could hear my dead father's voice', The Guardian, 9 February, 2020
• 'Last Call' Kill Your Darlings, 28 January, 2020
• 'Explainer: how Romanticism rebelled against cold-hearted rationality' The Conversation, 26 July, 2018
• 'Betrayal and guilt: past and future collide in Easter Rising commemorations' The Conversation, 22 April, 2016
• 'Dystopian Donald: the horror and the hope in Trump's presidential campaign' The Conversation, 17 October, 2016
• 'Permablitz' Arena MagazineOct-Nov 2009
• 'First Australians: the politics of recognition', Arena Magazine, no.98, Dec-Jan, 2008
• 'Mothers and Sons' A review of Colm Tóibín's Mothers and Sons'. In The Age29 March, 2008
• 'Non-violence: The History of a Dangerous IdeaA review of Mark Kurlanky's book. The Age February 23, 2007
• 'On Non-Indigenous Belonging' Arena Magazine, 2006
• 'From Precarity to Precarious' Arena Magazine, April-May 2006
• 'Risking It', Arena Magazine, no.80, 2005
• 'The Stench of Abandonment: Hurricane Katrina', Arena Magazine, no.79, 2005
• 'Return of the Repressed', Editorial, Arena Magazine, no. 53, 2001
• 'After Consumerism'. Editorial, Arena Magazine, no. 52, 2001
• 'Race, sex and power'. A review of Mark Kurlansky's The White Man in the Tree. In TheAge, Saturday Extra, 26 May, 2001)
• 'Emerald Germs'. A review of Patrick McCabe's The Emerald Germs of Ireland. In TheAge, Saturday Extra, 24 February, 2001
• 'A Writer of Absence'. A review of John Banville's Eclipse. In the Age, Saturday Extra, 7 October, 2000
• 'Ground Control', Arena Magazine, no. 48, 2000
• 'George W. Bush: Linking God, Death and Votes' Arena Magazine, no. 46, 2000
• 'Three Geeks, Three Films: Existenz, Being John Malkovich, Fight Club'. In Arena Magazine, no. 45, 2000