Research Interests
Open to PhD applications in the fields of:
- Fiction
- Creative Non-Fiction
Public outreach & key achievements
My latest book is a novel called The Boy from the Sea. It was published by Picador in February 2025 and has received numerous reviews. It was shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year Award and named a Best Book of 2025 by the Sunday Times. It was also adapted for BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime slot and lead many other writing commissions, such as an article for Dua Lipa’s culture website Service95. The Boy from the Sea is being published in fourteen languages. Reviews include: “Poignantly paints the struggles of marriage, caregiving, grief and financial worry” – Financial Times. “A novel that is warm, full of lightly worn wisdom and wit. It is a joy" – Sunday Times. “An enticing panorama of a small Irish fishing village transformed by the discovery of an infant … Readers will be hooked” – Publishers Weekly (USA). “Wry, observant, various and thoughtful, a book that gathers momentum like a westerly, the crash of consequences giving way to a late calm, the reader left with a stunned impression of the storm that just blew over” – Irish Times. “Poignant and humane, this work expertly depicts a close-knit community” – Economist. "Carr’s story is both expansive and intimate, funny and warm, while also psychologically acute. And it carries a cargo hold full of feeling beneath the decks. The result is immersive in the best way" – The Herald (Scotland).
The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland’s Border was published by Faber & Faber in 2017 and was also widely and positively reviewed and, due partly to Brexit, gained significant media attention. In the Guardian Colm Tóibín called the book, “Great writing about landscape and history”. While in the Daily Telegraph Michael Kerr said, "It is Carr's contention that Ireland is more divided than any of us suspected — not in two but in three: north, south and borderland. The third state is opened up in this marvellous book".
was developed with funding from the Higher Education Authority’s North-South Research Programme 2021, a collaborative scheme arising from the government’s Shared Island Initiative. Co-PIs, Prof. Eve Patton from Trinity College Dublin and myself for QUB, were awarded funding and then brought on two post-doc researchers, Dr Orla Fitzpatrick (based in Dublin) and Dr Aisling Reid (based in Belfast). We designed in line with Shared Island initiatives to appeal to educators, at both secondary and third level, students, cultural historians and policy-makers as well as members of the public at home and abroad. See .
I make maps that I exhibit widely and have been selected for inclusion in government and university collections and I curate a touring exhibition called Mapping Alternative Ulster, funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. See . It is an exhibition of maps created by independent cartographers and has received wide media attention. It first ran in Belfast’s Ulster Museum in 2015 and its most recent run was in Donegal’s Regional Cultural Centre in 2022. See .
Research students
Current research students include marine biologist Rebecca Hunter's non-fiction, although personal, study of north-west Ireland's costal ecology.
Alumni: Where are they now
Past research students include Christina Collins, author of After Zero and The Town with No Mirrors and Louise Kennedy, author of The End of the World is a Cul de Sac, Trespasses and Stations.
Discover More
- Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- School of Arts, English and Languages
- Garrett Carr is a Senior Lecturer in the Seamus Heaney Centre at Áù¾ÅÉ«Ìà and a Fellow of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice.