Dee Maher Ring is an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Researcher at the School of Media. Her multidisciplinary PhD research spans design, craft, and heritage studies to construct a case for the cultural significance of Ireland's rich heritage of vernacular letterform on shopfronts, and the traditional craft of signwriting.

Through projects commissioned by Kilkenny County Council's Heritage Office, including the Creative Ireland-funded Kilkenny Traditional Shopfront Signage Project 2021 and the Callan Audit of Shopfront Signage Project 2022, she has developed an original methodology for surveying shopfront fascia lettering in Ireland. Furthermore, she delivered the Inistioge Fascia Signs School Project, a Creative Ireland supported intergenerational community heritage initiative in 2022.

During 2023, she collaborated with the Digital Repository of Ireland on a national pilot project to ingest, publish and preserve the KTSSP 2021 audit image collection through Kilkenny County Council Library Membership, as a model pathway to the repository that demonstrates “optimal use of DRI Membership”. https://dri.ie/news/kilkenny-shopfronts-collection-published/

Dee holds a BA in Visual Communications (SETU 2006), HDip in Arts Education (MTU/Crawford College of Art & Design 2007), MDes in Interdisciplinary Design (Edinburgh Napier University 2008), and held the position of design lecturer in Scotland (2008-2016).

Awards & Scholarships

2022-2026 Irish Research Council – Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme

Oct 2022 ATypi (Association Typographique Internationale) Tech Talks – Scholarship Ticket

Dec 2022 Irish Georgian Society – Desmond Guinness Scholarship

Publications

Jan 2023 “Just Our Type: The Story of Irish Handcrafted Signwriting” https://arrow.tudublin.ie/tudcontrib/385/

Nov 2023 “Typ.ologies: Reframing Ireland's vernacular letterform through the lens of heritage” 

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the International Congress of Information Design, a special edition collection of the best evaluated CIDI2023 articles were published. https://doi.org/10.51358/id.v20i2.1095

Jan 2024 “Kilkenny Traditional Shopfront Signage Project (KTSSP) 2021” – Photographic collection and research notes, Digital Repository of Ireland https://doi.org/10.7486/DRI.gh93ws381-1

Apr 2024 Kilkenny Traditional Shopfront Signage Project (KTSSP) 2021 Report http://doi.org/10.21427/gymg-b966 (Available Apr 2026)

Conferences, Lectures & Talks

May 2022 Paper: “Signs of the Times”

Typography Ireland: “Building Ligatures” Seminar, TU Dublin

Sep 2022 Paper: “Unseen signs: Illuminating Ireland’s undocumented graphic heritage”

Irish Humanities Alliance "Streets Ahead" Annual Conference, Making Memory in Civic Space, TU Dublin

Sep 2023 “Legacy Letters: Towards a Methodology for Documenting the Graphic Heritage of Vernacular Shopfront Lettering of Ireland”

Design History Society "Displaying Design: History, Criticism, and Curatorial Discourses" International Annual Conference, ESAD (Escola Superior de Artes e Design), Matosinhos, Portugal

Nov 2023 Paper: “Typ.ologies: Reframing Ireland's vernacular letterform through the lens of heritage”

CIDI 2023 – 20th Anniversary Information Design International Conference, SBDI (Brazilian Society of Information Design) & UFPE (Federal University of Pernambuco), Brazil online

Nov 2023 Paper: “Kilkenny Signwriting: Design, Heritage & the mysterious Mr. O’Bilia”

DCCI (Design Craft Council Ireland) Irish Design Week 2023 public talk, “A Nation on Display: Landscapes, Luxuries & Legacies in the construction of a new folklore of Irish Design”, National Museum of Ireland. (presented by my fellow panellists)

Jan 2024 The King’s Foundation All-Ireland Heritage Skills Programme, Student Cohort Lecture, The Heritage Council HQ, and walking tour of Kilkenny

Mar 2024 Lecture: “Ireland's graphic heritage of vernacular shopfront lettering”

Irish Georgian Society, Winter/Spring Lecture Series, IGS, Dublin

June 2024 Paper: “Letter-Scapes: Promoting, Protecting and Preserving Ireland’s

Unique Graphic Heritage of Vernacular Letterforms”

ACHS 2024 “Coimirce”, Biannual International Conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies, University of Galway.