“When I was little, I lived in Lucca in Tuscany for a year because my mum had watched Eat Pray Love.” Joseph drops the line as casually as if he were talking about breakfast. He’s a Dubliner, but not the one in Joyce—where those pages are paralyzed, he’s in motion: cosmopolitan, unafraid, switching languages as easily as he switches cities.
Dr. Martens, Dickies, a plaid shirt, jacket undone, a rakish moustache—Joseph, “Joe” to everyone, is the sharpest dresser in the class, though the bar isn’t exactly high. He studied Italian and French at university and speaks Spanish too. “Languages were the only thing I was good at in school,” he says.
An Erasmus exchange took him to Bologna, which he loved. Maybe it was the rive gauche air of that “minor Paris” Guccini sang about, but soon after he moved to Paris itself. And yet, for all its cosmopolitan charm, the city left him feeling like an étranger—more Camus’s Meursault than a resident.
He went back to Dublin, worked as a tour guide to pay the bills, and finished his languages degree in 2024. “Dublin is intimate,” he says. “It’s the kind of city where you actually build relationships—where people stick.” He started a master’s to become a teacher, then stepped away; qualifying and settling into the classroom would have taken years he wasn’t ready to give.
Then came the pivot: event marketing—festivals, social media, brand stories. He loved the pace and the teamwork. But the longer he stayed, the more every brief felt like the last, and the less control he had over the story. What didn’t fade was the pull toward communication that reports rather than promotes. So when he found this journalism program—hands-on, newsroom-minded—it felt like the first move that put the narrative back in his hands.
What’s lighting him up now? Rome, for starters—his third time living in Italy, and once again outside the comfort zone. “I’m meeting people from different worlds,” he says. “Before, my colleagues were basically copies of me—same jobs, same passions, same places. Boring.” The city’s noise suits him; so does its mess.
His taste runs happily in two gears: from trashy comedies—yes, White Chicks—to bona fide classics. He’ll binge Hitchcock, then dive into ’60s and ’70s Italian cinema: Anna Magnani, Mamma Roma, Roma città aperta. What he loves most are performers who can hold a frame, or a stage.
Musically, he listens wide and without snobbery: Beyoncé (seen live, “an incredible performer”), Kendrick Lamar, R&B, techno, and unapologetic pop. He has little patience for people who look down on pop fans; for him, stagecraft and connection are the point. His festival of choice? Altogether Now in Ireland, four days of exactly that mix.
Favorite place in the world? A three-month trip across Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam settled it. For Joe, it’s Angkor Wat: “the most beautiful thing I’ve seen with my own eyes.” A temple you encounter more than visit—stone and jungle in slow conversation, dawn doing the lights, silence doing the rest.
Read him this way: Bologna over Paris, Altogether Now over Glastonbury, a Buddhist temple over any skyline selfie. The pattern holds: intimacy over gentrification; essence over surface. He writes the way he travels—light on baggage, heavy on attention.
Full disclosure: none of this may survive a fact-check, it’s drawn from an interview with a Dubliner speaking in a thick Dublin accent
