Dr Rachel Hoare is Director of the Centre for Forced Migration Studies at Trinity College Dublin’s School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies, where she has been a full-time academic since 1996. Her recent book, Psychological Support for Refugee Adolescents: An Expressive Arts Approach to Wellbeing and Trauma Recovery (Routledge, 2025), bridges neuroscience, trauma theory, and creative interventions to provide practical guidance for professionals working with displaced young people.
Rachel is an accredited expressive arts psychotherapist who has been working with unaccompanied minors through Tusla (Irish Child and Family Agency) for nearly a decade, and serves as faculty at the Children’s Therapy Centre in Mullingar. Her research is grounded in the lived experiences of people navigating forced migration, exploring how young people rebuild identity, belonging, and wellbeing in the aftermath of displacement and trauma. She has worked extensively with Spirasi, Ireland’s National Centre for Survivors of Torture, researching how creative expression within befriending programmes can facilitate healing and connection for torture survivors.
At Trinity College Dublin, Rachel has been actively involved in supporting refugee students, including recent initiatives for students from Gaza. Her work emphasises the power of creative expression to facilitate healing and connection when verbal communication is constrained by trauma, language barriers, or cultural differences.