Clare Gallagher

Dr Clare Gallagher is Co-Director for BA (Hons) Photography with Video, teaches MFA Photography and is a PhD Supervisor in the Art & Design Research Institute. Her research focuses on home and women's experiences, using art to challenge their invisibility. She also curates and speaks about marginalised voices and subject matter in Northern Irish culture. Her new book, Subversive Mothers, Disturbing Domesticity, was published by Bloomsbury in 2026.

Clare has taught since 2003 and has been a Fellow of the HEA since 2016. She studied in London, Canterbury, Toulouse and Belfast, earning a PhD on making visible women's work in the home.  She has been External Examiner at the University of Sunderland and at IADT in Dún Laoghaire. Clare is a reviewing member of the Art & Design Ethics Filter Committee and was a member of Ulster University's Open Research & Innovation Research Strategy Group. She is a member of the Northern Irish Art Network and has been on the Board of Directors of Source Photographic Review and the Belfast Photo Festival. 

She has exhibited her work internationally, including at the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki and at Photo Museum Ireland, Dublin, and her photobook The Second Shift was named in The Guardian's best photography books. She was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2021 and the Paul Hamlyn Visual Artists Award in 2023. Her work is in a number of collections including Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Clare has written for Visual Artists Ireland, the British Journal of Photography and contributed a chapter for Stephen Bull's key book A Companion to Photography published by Wiley-Blackwell. She also led the Curating Activism strand of Frederick Douglass Week 2024 in Belfast and is Principal Investigator for AHRC-IAA awards The Second Shift and Taking Boys Seriously.

Clare is Chair of Supervisors for Ara Devine's PhD on post-memory and the Irish border, Sarah Tehan's PhD on post-colonialism and photography, Elisa Valandro's PhD on memory and family archives, Aidan O'Neill's PhD on survivor-centred approaches to conflict-related sexual violence, Paul Thomas' PhD on spaces of sexual identity and trauma, and Selina Bonelli's PhD on photography, women and conflict. Clare also co-supervises Ashle Bailey's PhD on cultural trauma post-Troubles and Niamh Callaghan's PhD on the psychosocial experience of murals in Northern Ireland.