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Maria Cullen

@mariacullen.bsky.social

268 followers 615 following 15 posts

Postdoctoral researcher on Solidarity, Sovereignty and Sanctuary (SOS) project in UCD School of History boatrefugeehistory.org. Interests in humanitarian history, human rights, migration and global health.

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Maria Cullen @mariacullen.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Excited to see this out in the world!

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Maria Cullen @mariacullen.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Very excited to have started working on this project, which traces the global history of boat refugees, at @ucddublin.bsky.social

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

🎪🎪🎪

And then came the fallout. The BBC was roundly criticised for airing Bob Vylan’s set (and, in fairness, for censoring Kneecap’s appearance). There was swift condemnation from politicians and pundits alike that either had been booked at all, and Avon and Somerset Police announced it was launching a criminal investigation into comments made from the stage during both performances.
By Monday the BBC itself had released a statement describing remarks made as “incitement to violence”. Many were quick to point out that inciting violence against a literal army, not least one almost 4,000km away, perhaps stretches the definition of that term, and that the BBC explicitly rejected calls for a similar apology in 2020, when a panellist on Have I Got News for You suggested dropping a bomb on Glastonbury to kill Jeremy Corbyn supporters.

No matter. Between then and Wednesday morning, my TV viewing included half a dozen BBC News bulletins, every one of which gave the outrage over the chants higher billing than the 200 Palestinian civilians killed in those intervening 48 hours, half of them while seeking food at designated aid sites, across several attacks that also targeted a school, as well as a cafe crowded with women and children and hosting a birthday party at the time. If moved to discuss distractions, we should really start and end there.

It would have been nice to use the BBC’s mostly excellent coverage to reminisce about my one trip to Glastonbury, in 2015, during which I watched Christy Moore watch Kanye West, and managed to avoid passing a solid bowel movement for four straight days; to wax lyrical about music festivals, or the joy I now feel watching them – for free, excellently rendered and produced in full high definition – from my couch rather than while covered with mud, sunburn or both in a series of increasingly large fields I’ve paid £400 to sweat in.
But the main story of the BBC’s Glastonbury 2025 coverage will now, and forever, be this self-made morass of missed points and moral cowardice. To focus solely on the music, and the BBC’s superlative presentation of it, would overshoot complacency and enter the realm of complicity.
“Apart from all that unpleasantness,” we might ask, “how did you enjoy the play, Mrs Lincoln?”

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Maria Cullen @mariacullen.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

So looking forward to this!! @dacretu.bsky.social will be giving a paper to the Humanitarian History Seminar at @hcrinstitute.bsky.social on her new book, Foreign Aid and State Building in Interwar Romania: In Quest of an Ideal (Stanford University Press, 2024). www.sup.org/books/histor...

sup.org

Foreign Aid and State Building in Interwar Romania | Stanford University Press

The decades following World War I were a period of political, social, and economic transformation for Central and Eastern Europe. This book considers the role of foreign aid in Romania between 1918 an...

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Maria Cullen @mariacullen.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Looking forward to discussing Ready to Use Therapeutic Foods and the construction of success in humanitarian medicine this Sunday at @aahmhistmed.bsky.social. Historical perspectives are all the more relevant in this moment, which has highlighted the precarity of the global aid infrastructure.

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Maria Cullen @mariacullen.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Exploring Boston Back Bay today ahead of the American Association for the History of Medicine conference!

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Maria Cullen @mariacullen.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

An interesting development from the MSF Access Campaign challenging the lack of transparency in R&D from pharmaceutical companies.

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LSE Health Policy @lsehealthpolicy.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐚 𝐦𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐞 ‘𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥’ 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞? @kristinajenei.bsky.social latest research explores how @who.int Lists of Essential Medicines have evolved and political challenges that shape decisions today. Read more: bit.ly/4iboTUy

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Maria Cullen @mariacullen.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMJ621/r... New role for a postdoctoral researcher on the Wellcome-funded Developing Humanitarian Medicine project in Manchester! Come and work with us 😃

jobs.ac.uk

Research Associate in The History of Humanitarian Medicine at The University of Manchester

An opportunity for an academic position as a Research Associate in The History of Humanitarian Medicine is available, as advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Apply now and explore other academic job openings.

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Maria Cullen @mariacullen.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

There are worse locations for a writing retreat… feeling very very lucky to be at the Brocher Foundation in Geneva for the next few weeks!!

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Dónal Hassett @donalh.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

🚨Check out the Call for Papers for the Irish Conference of Historians to be held in Maynooth 12-13 September 2025 on the theme of 'Inner Lives and Outer Realties'. Deadline 31 March. We have two wonderful keynotes, Prof Lindsey Earner-Byrne (TCD) and Prof M'hamed Oualdi (EUI)🚨

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Maria Cullen @mariacullen.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Home in Dublin for the weekend so had to get some Bear coffee to bring back to Manchester 🐻 fingers crossed it fuels some book writing productivity!

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Maria Cullen @mariacullen.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

I wrote a blog post post ('Historicising state-NGO relations in global drug access campaigns: the case of the Bangladesh drug policy of 1982'), which is a reflection on a wealth of documentation I came across in the War on Want archives in SOAS last summer. www.dhm.manchester.ac.uk/blog/histori...

dhm.manchester.ac.uk

DHM

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Maria Cullen @mariacullen.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Visited Irish Museum of Modern Art in Royal Hospital Kilmainham for the first time yesterday!

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Maria Cullen @mariacullen.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Some 2024 highlights for my first bluesky post!

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