Jimmy Ó Briain Billings
[email protected]Jimmy is a learner, scholar, sociologist, musician, and avid hiker. He was raised by the river Siúr, and like many Irish people has a patchwork of ancestry from Gael to Norman to Norse to Palatine. He has been on a decolonization journey exploring the possibilities of ‘re-existence’ in Ireland for the past few years. Jimmy established Gaelic Re-existence to facilitate conversations around the coordinates of modernity/coloniality in Ireland, and what decolonization can mean in the Irish context as a process of reconnection with the land and ancestral lifeways that were in relationship with it. Jimmy is an Associate Researcher with the MA in Race, Migration and Decolonial Studies at University College Dublin.
Jimmy holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and a master’s degree in Race, Migration and Decolonial Studies, both from University College Dublin.
Writing:
Essays on Substack: https://gaelicreexistence.substack.com/
Land and ancestral revitalisation as decolonising practices in Ireland (2021) in Unapologetic Magazine
Decolonial possibilities in Ireland (2021) in Airmid’s Journal
Qualifications:
MSocSc Race, Migration and Decolonial Studies (University College Dublin, Ireland)
BA Sociology (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Positions:
Associate Researcher MA Race, Migration and Decolonial Studies (School of Sociology, University College Dublin)
Academic conference papers:
Ancestral re-existence in Ireland through the Land: A decolonial exploration of
pre-Christian spiritualities and places (New Perspectives Symposium on the Humanities, NUI Maynooth, 2019)
Temporal displacement(s), spatial re-existence(s): Decolonising Ireland’s relationship to place through native woodlands and pre-Christian sacred places (Sociological Association of Ireland Annual Conference, NUI Galway, 2019)