BIO

Dr Diarmuid Hester is a cultural historian, activist, and author.

 

Diarmuid is originally from County Kilkenny, Ireland. He received his PhD in English literature from the University of Sussex and has held research fellowships at New York University, the Library of Congress, the University of Oxford, the British Library, and the University of Cambridge where he was a Leverhulme Fellow until 2021. He teaches at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, and is a research associate of Emmanuel College.

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A confident and experienced public speaker, Diarmuid has appeared on podcasts, radio, and TV, at summer festivals like Wilderness and Irregular Folk, and at the Hay Festival. He is the creator of Prick Up Your Ears, immersive podcasts and audio trails that uncover the little-known histories of familiar places. He is also the co-founder of Club Urania, a monthly performance and music night for LGBTQ+ people and allies developed in partnership with Cambridge Junction and Wysing Arts Centre. In 2020, Diarmuid was named a BBC New Generation Thinker, and he regularly contributes to BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4.

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Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper is Diarmuid’s first book, published by the University of Iowa Press in 2020. It is the definitive account of a writer once called ‘the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction’. Diarmuid's second book, Nothing Ever Just Disappears: Seven Hidden Histories, follows queer artists and writers whose lives and work are inextricable from a sense of place. It was published in the UK by Allen Lane/Penguin in 2023 and in North America by Pegasus Press in 2024.

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Diarmuid is passionate about the capacity of cultural history to bring about radical change. By uncovering marginalised stories. By connecting details that have previously been kept apart. By creating counter-narratives that imagine the past differently and shift our perceptions of what's possible in the present.