Dr. Diarmuid Hester

Biography

Diarmuid Hester is an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of English and a research associate of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. He grew up in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and received his BA from University College Dublin. He pursued MA degrees in Sexual Dissidence and Cultural Change at the University of Sussex, and Contemporary Critical Theory at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy. Hester completed his PhD in English at the University of Sussex and was a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in English at Cambridge from 2017 to 2020. Throughout his career, he has held research fellowships at distinguished institutions including New York University, the Library of Congress, the University of Oxford, and the British Library. In 2020, he became a BBC-AHRC New Generation Thinker, recognized for his ability to convey scholarly ideas to a broad audience through various media forms. Hester has created the Great Recorded History: Queer Cambridge Audio Trail and is an organizer of Club Urania, a performance music night for LGBTQ+ individuals. He teaches modern and contemporary literature at Cambridge, supervising undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations, primarily in queer literature and culture. He also runs a specialist seminar titled '20, rue Jacob: Space, Gender, & Sexuality Wars.' His recent works include the books 'Wrong: Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper' and 'Ever Disappears: Seven Hidden Histories.'

Research Interests

Experience