Sarah L. Townsend is an Assistant Professor of English and co-founder of the Irish Studies Program at the University of New Mexico. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley. The adopted Korean granddaughter of Irish-American immigrants, her current research and teaching centers on race and the transnational formation of Irish identity. Townsend is co-editor of a forthcoming volume on the Irish Bildungsroman (Syracuse UP) and author of a dozen published and forthcoming articles on topics including Irish women’s genre fiction, Muslim community theatre in Ireland, the evolution of literary genres, ethnic neighborhoods in the United States, Black and Irish Traveller hair cultures, and multicultural sequels and adaptations. Her next book project, titled What’s New About the New Irish? Immigration, Whiteness, and Racial Mobility in Ireland and the United States, 1892-2020, draws on extensive archival research in Ireland and North America in order to trace the hidden history of transnational white supremacy that undergirds contemporary Irish multiculturalism.

Townsend has held major residential fellowships at Wellesley College’s Newhouse Center for the Humanities (2019-20) and the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at Notre Dame (2014-15). She has delivered invited lectures in a variety of venues including the Galway International Arts Festival, the Irish Consulate, NUI Galway, Villanova, Notre Dame, Boston College, Dartmouth, and the 2020 American Conference for Irish Studies, where she gave a keynote address. She serves on the Executive Committee of the MLA Irish Literature Forum and is Past President of the American Conference for Irish Studies, West.