About
I’m Noreen Bowden, and I’m the author of Ean.ie/GlobalIrish.ie. I am passionate about diaspora issues, and have been for most of my life.
I was the director of the Emigrant Advice Network from 2006 to 2009. Before that, I worked at Liam Ferrie’s Irish Emigrant Publications in Galway, first as web editor and then general manager. I also worked as Associate Editor at VirtualIrish.com in New York at the height of the dot-com boom, in 1999 and 2000.
I lived in Ireland for a total of nearly fifteen years of my adult life. Before I left Ireland in 2011, I worked as a consultant developing several projects related to the diaspora and the web. I was also the Irish representative at Europeans Throughout the World, a Brussels-based organisation working on behalf of European expats; I was elected vice-president of the organisation in September, 2009.
I grew up in New York, where my parents had emigrated in the 1950s and 1960s, and I’ve recently returned there. I completed my Masters in Public Administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2012. I also have an MA in English with a Concentration in Irish Literature from Boston College (where I focused on the study of emigrant literature) and a BA from the University of Notre Dame.
You can follow me on Twitter, or contact me through LinkedIn (or at info@ean.ie).
If you’re interested in any aspect of emigration or the diaspora, I’d love to hear from you! Please feel free to contact me if you’d like help with a question, feedback on a project, more information on anything related to these pages, or even just to say hello!