Reflections from Water Ways Gothic and Horror Symposium: Water in Flux in Ireland and Beyond

This symposium, which took place in early September 2026 at the University of Galway, drew creative practitioners, scholars, and early career researchers from Ireland, the UK, and continental Europe. Historically and contemporaneously, water is often pushed to the periphery in research and the imagination. Symposium organisers Dr Máiréad Casey and Clare Robinson called upon their presenters to recentre water in research and the imagination. Presenters and attendees meaningfully demonstrated that water is not just a rich area of inquiry in text, but a central site of contemporary anxieties and desires. 

As this symposium aimed to foreground the value of creative practice, it also included a complementary “Arts in Action” event with Irish writers whose work often entangles with the gothic or horrific, Sam Fowley and Dr Laoighseach Ní Choistealbha. Fowley read an excerpt from Eyes Guts Throat Bones, while Ní Choistealbha read from Solas Geimhridh, An Dearcán, and forthcoming collection Éiric na Seirce. 

Key Themes 
Presenters indicated that water’s character is irrevocably shaped or stained by that what it carries. Water, therefore, is defined by what it bears, whether it is lords in lakes, young women sailing across the sea to access the abortion care that Ireland denied, amalgams of parasite and man that move through sewers, or boats literally turned coffin, a distortion of the coffin ships of the 19th century. This echoes water as amniotic fluid, as primordial soup, as medium for the asexual production of spores in the damp and dark. Consequently, water is a prime point for considering parenthoods of all kinds. 

In contemporary gothic and horror texts, water also returns. It returns to us the undeniable violence of our histories, whether those be systemic, like in the slave trade of the Atlantic, the ecological, as in the mutant offspring of Chernobyl and Plum Island, the familial, as in a legacy of incest, or individual traumas. Here, the water that threatens humanity and selfhood is largely contaminated, poisoned, or otherwise shaped by human action. In fear of what seeps into our homes, our lands, and our bodies, these texts often bring purity and contamination to the forefront. This symposium indicated that these texts interrogate not just what is cleanly or abject, but who or what water must be clean for.   

Presenters indicated that tensions between contamination and purification arise long before Ireland’s independence. Folklore and fairytale depict holy wells not only as places of healing and cleansing, but as portals between here and the other world, allowing for contagion under and over hill. In the 18th century, a lake that cradles a folk hero is sullied as ideas around a free Ireland ripple, distorting the same hero into a sinner and practitioner of dark magic. In 19th and 20th century Irish gothic, the threat of the supernatural and the natural blur in representations of the uneducated and wild Irish Catholic peasantry, a contaminating force that threatens the purity and stability of Anglo-Protestant identity formation. A swamp promises contamination through its very fecundity, while contrastingly, one family’s bog retains the memory of the Great Hunger and seeps sickness and famine back into a family and land. Increasingly, texts demonstrate a tension between contamination and the maintenance of group or national identity. 

However, this symposium demonstrated that contemporary gothic and horror texts do not present purification and contamination as an uncomplicated binary. Instead, the cleansing and polluting capacity of water becomes tangled with anxieties and desires surrounding the maintenance and dissolution of selfhood.  The holy well returns to Irish discourse through American horror film. Its pure water completely dissolves the boundaries between the skin of two lovers, allowing for a transformation that troubles gender and individual identities within a romantic relationship. A decaying house blurs the lines between women living and dead. The bathtub and shower, typically depicted as spaces of purification and social discipline, are interrogated, suggesting contamination and the deviant as necessary to creation, not unlike the primordial ooze that may have birthed life. These texts, indicative of significant fears around the individual’s ability to control who and what they are, also suggest that adherence to purity is a form of stagnancy, intriguingly linking contamination to change.  

Remaining Questions 
Gothic and horror as genres are characterised by their ability to reflect the fears, anxieties, and desires of a people, time and place. This symposium has shown that people in Ireland and worldwide are preoccupied not only with the state of our water ways, but what those states say about us. These texts expose the feedback loop between the character of water and the character of the people that act upon it.

As organisers, this left us with lingering questions about water and contemporary Ireland. First, on an international level. Despite Ireland’s history with migration, its coffin ships bound for the new world, its migration rules tighten. How will Ireland’s character change as it purposefully averts its gaze from crafts overburdened with asylum seekers, seeking safety across a tumultuous sea? 

Nationally, there is increasing discourse around the prioritisation of data centres over private homes on the electrical grid, as well as Irish data centres’ significant use of public water. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that 1.7 billion litres of water were directed towards data centres from the public water supply from 2024-2025 (cited in O’Caroll and Redmond). While this number may seem small, considering that Ireland treats 1.26 billion litres of water daily (Annual Report 2025), we must also consider that 36 per cent of treated water is lost through pipe leaks (National Leakage Reduction Programme). Extending to electricity, Ireland acts as a ‘cautionary example’ to other nations in its outweighing of AI infrastructure growth over local grid capacity and responsible siting, as in 2023, data centres accounted for 21 per cent of Ireland’s total electricity use, ‘exceeding the combined electricity use of all urban households’ (Azcel et al. 35). Data centres’ outsized resource consumption does not seem reflective of Ireland’s climate action plan or sustainable development goals. Instead, it demonstrates a prioritisation of private equity over Ireland’s human residents, its flora, its fauna, and its future. 

On a more local level, I reflect on Galway. While I am delighted that the city has recently secured €3.36 million for its WATERWAY project, this sits uneasily with the recent treatment of Galway’s waters. Its city canals are choked with refuse, and I cannot find evidence of Galway City Council’s involvement in a canal cleanup since 2022. Despite this, its waterways are dotted with placards that proudly claim that Galway is home to kingfishers, a bird that hunts only in pristine waters. While I am heartened by the community-led cleanups that take place on local beaches monthly, and the work of the Galway Waterways Foundation between 2017-2021, it is discouraging to see inconsistent effort from local governance. After all, what endangers a body of water endangers the lives of all that depend on it, human or otherwise.

While gothic and horror can help elucidate the concerns of our time, our people, and our place, the organisers of this symposium hope to also encourage individual and community action within your own waterways. 

Works Cited

Aczel, Miriam, et al. UNU-INWEH Report: Environmental Cost of AI's Energy Use: Carbon, Water and Land Footprint, 2026. 

Fowley, Sam. Eyes Guts Throat Bones. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2023.  

Uisce Éireann, “Annual Report 2025”.

---, “National Leakage Reduction Programme”. Accessed 24 September 2026. 

Ní Choistealbha, Laoighseach. “Adhastar Sneachta,” An Dearcán, edited by Laoighseach Ní Choitealbha, 2026, pp, 25-7. 

---. Éiric na Seirce. Forthcoming. 

---. Solas Greimhidh. Barzaz, 2023. 

O’Caroll, Conor and David Mac Redmond. “Data Centres Used Almost One Billion Litres of Water Last Year, but Another Industry Used Far More.” The Journal, 24 July 2026. Accessed 24 September 2026.