Erin Valentine is currently a M.A. candidate in the Performance as Public Practice program at The University of Texas at Austin. Interested broadly in the role of performance in national identity and state building, she focuses on Irish theater from the early 1900s to current day. She is currently researching how theater and performance was and is used to process national trauma caused by state-sanctioned violence at the hands of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Valentine graduated from Princeton University with a bachelors in sociology and minor in theater. For her senior thesis, she organized and moderated an Irish Theater Symposium at Princeton University for which she won a a department award for Outstanding Senior Thesis Work. She also spent a summer at National University of Ireland Galway studying performance studies and the performance of Irish identity in various art forms and tourism. Valentine has a background in dramaturgy, theater management, costume design and stage management.