Marielle O'Neill

Marielle O’Neill is a doctoral researcher at Leeds Trinity University.

Her research focuses on the consonance of Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s political activism with contemporary social and political movements. She was awarded a scholarship from Leeds Trinity University to fund her studies.

Marielle holds a BA in English (University of Leicester), MA in British Politics: Parliamentary Studies (University of Leeds) and a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (Leeds Beckett University).

She has been active in politics on both sides of the Atlantic, working on Capitol Hill, Washington, D. C. and in the Houses of Parliament, London. She worked for several years in local government in the UK; including serving as a councillor for four years on Kirklees Council. In 2016, she was selected as one of ten Young Fabians to research and observe the 2016 presidential election in the US. She campaigned for Barack Obama in Virginia in 2012 and for Hillary Clinton in Florida in 2016.

Marielle acted as the Programming Co-Chair for Outside/rs 2022; a hybrid conference held at the University of Brighton in April 2022 for postgraduates researching society's outsiders.

She serves on the Executive Committee of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain. She is the technical coordinator of the Society's online events programme and manages the Instagram and Twitter accounts. Like Virginia Woolf, Marielle has a passion for social justice and for eradicating inequalities in the education system.

As the Postgraduate Researchers’ Representative at Leeds Trinity University, she ensures that students' voices are heard by the university management and helps to support positive change to improve the postgraduate experience.

Marielle's academic interests cover the intersection of Politics, History and Literature. Her supervisors are Reverend Professor Jane de Gay and Dr Juliette Taylor-Batty.