Dr Jackie Uí Chionna

Dr. Jackie Uí Chionna teaches History at the University of Galway, in the west of Ireland. Always drawn to the personal stories of those who populate the historical narrative, she is primarily a writer of historical biography. Her first book, a biography of Irish businessman and politician Martin McDonogh, entitled He Was Galway: Máirtín Mór McDonogh (1860-1934), was published in November 2016, and was shortlisted for the NUI Historical Research Prize.

An experienced oral historian, Dr. Uí Chionna uses oral history extensively in her research, and her second book, An Oral History of University College Galway, 1930-1980: A University in Living Memory, was published in November 2019. In 2019 Dr. Uí Chionna was awarded an Archives By-Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge to work on her most recent book, a biography of Emily Anderson OBE (1891-1962). Anderson is acclaimed in the music world as the woman who, during the course of her career as a civil servant in the British ‘Foreign Office’, also translated into English the letters of Mozart and his family, and later those of Beethoven. In reality, Anderson was leading an entirely secret double life as the foremost female code breaker in the British intelligence service, for nearly forty years. Queen of Codes: The Secret Life of Emily Anderson, Britain’s Greatest Female Code Breaker, was published by Headline Publishing UK in April 2023.

During her time at OCLW Dr. Uí Chionna will work on her next project: a collective biography of the British female code breakers of the First and Second World Wars.