Katherine McGrory is setting out to make sense of how nationalist political parties reckon with contemporary gender politics. Her PhD research, carried out within the Cluster of Excellence Contestations of the Liberal Script (SCRIPTS), employs techniques from the field of discourse studies to examine the contradictory ways gender does political work within nationalisms in Northern Ireland, where those contradictions have been particularly salient across time. Ahead of an upcoming fellowship funded by Una Europa at the University College Dublin in September, McGrory is spending her summer refining her research with presentations in Spain and Ireland.

First coming to Berlin in the summer of 2023 to start her PhD with SCRIPTS under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Gülay Çağlar, McGrory’s academic trajectory prepared her well for a rigorous, interdisciplinary engagement with gendered and nationalist discourses in contemporary politics, particularly via a double Erasmus Mundus Master degree in Gender Studies in York and Bologna. Being a part of SCRIPTS has since been a formative experience, McGrory reflects: “It’s taught me how to start the kind of dialogues that are so pivotal in analyzing the social and political complexities of the world in which we live and which we will never unravel from within one discipline alone.” By bringing together researchers from across traditions and across regions of the world, she acknowledges, “SCRIPTS has become a space for a diversity of research questions, perspectives, and more broadly, ways of doing academia,” citing her fellow PhD students, in particular, as a constant source of energy and motivation.

One good example of this collaboration is McGrory’s development and leadership of an X-Student Research Group in 2025 together with fellow SCRIPTS doctoral students Karoline Estermann and Nikolina Klatt, titled Backlash Against Gender: Comparative Perspectives on Europe’s Anti-Gender Politics. The course was designed to give BA and MA students an introduction to anti-gender politics and discourse studies, as well as a general foundation for empirical research in the social sciences. “I learnt a lot during that experience, not just about how to teach, but also about my colleagues’ work and the methods they use in their research,” McGrory remarks, “and from the participants too, who consistently impressed all of us with their curiosity, motivation and knowledge on the topic.” One of the research groups was selected to present a poster of their research at the German Bundestag as part of the Erasmus+ project “Posters in Brussels.” With the X-Student Research Groups, Berlin University Alliance supports research teams of junior scientists in involving BA and MA students in ongoing research projects at any of the four BUA institutions, their Clusters of Excellence, Collaborative Research Centers, and other partners.

Recently, after achieving some preliminary results from her doctoral research, McGrory is refining her methodological approach via exchanges with experts in discourse studies. On July 9, 2026, she presented a working chapter of her doctoral research at the Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines Conference at the University of Valladolid in Spain. “It was a conference full of fascinating presentations,” McGrory reflects, not to mention “a great opportunity for me to stress-test my analytical approach within a community of researchers best placed to critique it.”

Taking part in the Summer Seminar Series of the Discourse Research Association of Ireland (DRAOI) on July 15, 2026, has been another avenue for refining her work. McGrory’s contribution, (Re)imagining the Nation: The Discursive Politics of Abortion in Northern Ireland, presented findings from her doctoral research, based on archival fieldwork carried out in Belfast, Dublin, and London. The engagement from the audience provoked a thoughtful discussion about how to historically contextualize the topic of abortion in Northern Ireland.

Facilitated by the Una Europa Fellowship scheme, McGrory’s summer activities are set to culminate with a research stay at the University College Dublin in September. “During my stay, I’ll work with professors and the Geary Institute for Public Policy to refine parts of my doctoral thesis,” McGrory shares about her plans, “I’m excited to have the opportunity to liaise with researchers who have shaped the field of political science in and on Ireland to which I hope one day to contribute.” Una Europa is an alliance of 11 leading research-intensive European universities, of which Freie Universität Berlin is a member.