Deirdre is a Lecturer in Spanish at Technological University Dublin and holds a PhD in Hispanic Studies from Trinity College Dublin, where she also taught. Deirdre's research areas include: twentieth- and twenty-first-century Spanish literary, visual and cultural studies; Rosa Montero and other contemporary Spanish authors; Spanish women’s writing; Spanish life writing; memory debates in contemporary Spain; Spain and the Holocaust; Spanish graphic narrative and comics; Spanish contemporary politics; contemporary Iberian Studies. Deirdre welcomes research proposals on any of these topics.

Deirdre is currently working on a research project that focuses on the representation in contemporary graphic novels of Spanish Republicans in Nazi concentration camps. Since 2024, Deirdre has served as co-editor of the International Journal of Iberian Studies, building on her six years of experience as co-editor of the Open Forum section. From 2017 to 2023, Deirdre was a regular contributing editor to The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies. She is a Board Member of the Association for Contemporary Iberian Studies, and served as the Communications Officer of the association between 2021 and 2024. She is also on the Advisory Board of the Journal of Franco-Irish Studies.

Between 2020 and 2024, Deirdre was a member of the EU-funded COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) iCOn-MICs (Investigation on Comics and Graphic Novels from the Iberian Cultural Area) network and is currently a member of the EU-funded COST network, COS-MICS (Comics and Sciences through Multidisciplinary Investigation and Collaboration 2025-29).

Deirdre is the Year Tutor for Second Years on the IBL Programme at TU Dublin, and External Examiner for both Munster Technological University (2022-2026) and for Cardiff University (2025-2029).

Deirdre is co-editor of the books, Challenges and Perspectives of Iberia and Beyond (eds. Mark Gant, Deirdre Kelly, Siân Edwards and Susana Rocha Relvas, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2025) and Regional, International, and Transatlantic Relations: From the Iberian Peninsula to the World (eds. Susana Rocha Relvas, Mark Gant, Deirdre Kelly and Siân Edwards, IGI Global, 2025, 510pp). She is also co-editor of the Special Issue, ‘The Rise of the Far Right in Spain and Portugal’ (eds. Deirdre Kelly and Anton Pujol, International Journal of Iberian Studies, 2024). She has published peer-reviewed articles, interviews, Reading Guides, and reviews in respected peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Romance Studies, International Journal of Iberian Studies, Tebeosfera, Studi Irlandesi, and The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies, among others.