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Mary Louise O’Donnell is a harpist and musicologist who has performed extensively throughout Ireland, Europe, Africa and Asia as a soloist and with various ensembles. She was awarded a doctorate by the University of Limerick in 2009 and, since then, has published widely on topics relating to Irish cultural history, semiotics and performance studies. Her first book, Ireland’s Harp: The Shaping of Irish Identity c. 1770-1880, was published in 2014 by UCD Press. Mary Louise has received many awards and grants to further her research, including an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship, Fulbright Scholarship, and Centre Culturel Irlandais Fellowship. Her current research focuses on the diverse ways in which the Irish harp was used to construct identity among Irish emigrants to North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 2019, Mary Louise was appointed Musician-in-Residence with Fingal County Council and, in 2020, she and her sister Teresa released an album entitled Heavenly Harps, Heavenly Cloths: Contemporary Music for the Irish Harp by Brian Boydell.
