SHSS Alumnae Link - Ellen McWilliams

Welcome to SHSS Alumnae Link!

This is where we connect with past pupils and find out what they’re up to now.

This week we linked with Ellen McWilliams (née McCarthy) who graduated in 1995.

Name and Current Position:

Dr Ellen Mc Williams (Née McCarthy), Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Exeter.

 Lives:

Bristol, England.

 Best Memory of Sacred Heart:

Some of my happiest memories of the Sacred Heart Secondary School are of the friends I made there, many of whom I am still in touch with to this day – even twenty years after I left West Cork for the West Country. But I also look back with a deep appreciation at the ethos fostered by our teachers and the culture of the school. Being a young woman in the Sacred Heart Secondary School community meant doing your best to live up to possibilities – we worked hard and took nothing for granted and were taught the importance of collectivism and kindness and the value of achieving something beyond ourselves. We were taught that we could hold our own in any room, whatever the odds, but were also trained to read the room with empathy and respect and wherever possible to try to be considerate and sensitive to others. These are the values I have tried to hold close and they have stood to me as an Irishwoman who has spent over twenty years navigating the hierarchies of British academia.

My time at the Sacred Heart outran the limiting stereotypes of the Irish convent school in the 1990s – it was a determinedly progressive and future-looking education. I was not the most academically confident student, but I was encouraged to find the things I was passionate about and not worry too much about the rest. The author of the original Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, reminds us that ‘we reason deeply, when we forcibly feel’ and at the Sacred Heart Secondary School we were encouraged in the development of an intellectual life, but also raised to be alert to feelings and to the feelings of others. You were made to feel valued for who you were – and particularly in the early days the quieter girls among us were made to feel a part of things and gently encouraged over time to find our place. 

  What were your favourite classes?

I enjoyed my English and History classes in ways that led to studying English and History at University College Cork and, eventually, to the work I do now. I had some stellar teachers at Sacred Heart, including Ms Norma Fitzpatrick and Ms Fiona Maher, in the early years, Ms Niamh Pattwell  (now Professor Niamh Pattwell of the School of English, Drama, and Film, UCD) and Mr Dennis Kingston were nothing shy of a meteoric influence in the years running up to the Leaving Certificate and were the reason I chose those subjects at undergraduate level.  

It is telling that I also enjoyed the subjects I struggled with. Irish and Maths were a constant uphill battle, but still had their rewards. Mrs Mary Wycherley, who will be so fondly remembered as a kind and gifted Irish teacher by generations of Sacred Heart women, found a way of making the Modh Coinníollach comprehensible and Mr Liam Nash taught Maths with great patience and understanding. They were always compassionate and encouraging – low marks in these subjects on the end of year report were accompanied by an acknowledgement of the hard work that had gone into achieving them, even if no trophies were collected. 

 Tell us about your career progression to date: 

After I completed my BA and MA at University College Cork and the University of Constance, I went on to do a PhD at the University of Bristol. I later worked at Bath Spa University and spent time as a Fulbright Scholar at Fordham University in New York before joining the Department of English at the University of Exeter. 

 If you weren’t in the job you have, what would you be doing?

My plan was always to train to be a secondary school teacher – I had no notion of becoming an academic. I have friends who teach at secondary level and have a great appreciation of the imagination and stamina of teachers who work across different subject areas and year groups and have to constantly adapt to a changing curriculum and the vagaries of the Department of Education. The generosity, vision, and tireless commitment of the teachers I met at the Sacred Heart left an impression – they remain some of my most important role models in my own efforts to make the university seminar room a safe, equal, and intellectually exciting space. 

 Advice you would give your teenage self:

Everything will get easier in time. At some point you will stop growing at a rate of half a foot a year. You will find the things that that you care about and that are interesting and exciting to you and talking to people when you meet them for the first time will no longer be such a tortuous challenge. 

In the meantime, trust your teachers – they really do have your best interests at heart. There may be times when the world feels friendless, but you will find your clan in the end. Try not to let the pressure of exams and the unforgiving Leaving Certificate Points System overwhelm you and, if you can, keep looking up to the horizons beyond. Take your time in figuring out what is right for you – there is no rush. Trust your own instincts rather than anyone else’s expectations of you. And don’t worry about going to the graduation dance at Fernhill alone because you were too shy to ask anyone to go with you. There will be other opportunities. 

 Favourite quote or motto?

‘The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.’ Oscar Wilde (one of our finest)

 ‘There's only one very good life and that's the life you know you want and you make it yourself.’ 

Diana Vreeland (writer and editor of Vogue in the 1960s and 1970s) 

 What is your hidden talent?

I make very good shortcrust pastry.

Ms Ann Marie Brosnan was appointed when I was in my second year at the Sacred Heart and was a charismatic presence from the start. She was also one of the teachers who revolutionised the subject that was called Home Economics when I first joined the school, but later became Home Economics: Scientific & Social. Over the years, in addition to being taught how to sew, cook, and bake and trained in how to make the kind of pastry that is the perfect base for any tart or quiche (everything – including the mixing instruments – must be cold) we learned about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Labour History, Family Law, and the Women’s Liberation Movement in Ireland. 

All of these subjects were fascinating to my sixteen year old self and I carried their lessons with me – but a well-made shortcrust pastry has its own value and is not to be taken for granted. 

Huge thanks to Ellen for taking the time to answer our questions.

See you soon for the next instalment of SHSS Alumnae Link.