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Triona Ryan

Feature Stories

Theories of Humour; Incongruity Resolution

Triona Ryan -
Have you ever asked yourself, “What’s the funniest joke in the world?” Well, Richard Wiseman, holder of Britain’s only Professorship in the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire has for his experiment Laugh Lab, 2002. He created the...
Feature Stories

Mindbugs & Blind Spots; Lessons from a Nursing Home & Beyond

Triona Ryan -
Many, many moons ago, when I was a fresh-faced graduate with a chunk of student debt to pay off, I worked for a while in a nursing home. It was a rather grand, if somewhat faded country home that...
Feature Stories

Is She a Work of Art or Scarred for Life?

Triona Ryan -
Let’s pretend I was 18 when I got my first tattoo. That’s still a considerable whack of years to have been inked.  The word tattoo means literally “a puncture, or mark made on the skin”, first noted in Captain Cook’s...
Feature Stories

Where Did All Our Time Go? A Kuaidi Kween Komments

Triona Ryan -
A kettle sits in my front garden, inside a wedge of polystyrene in a cardboard box. I know for sure it is a kettle, because I justbought a new one. On Taobao.  The piercing whistle of the old one has...
Feature Stories

Maps & Boundaries; The Greatest Human Fictions

Triona Ryan -
Alexander Von Humboldt. Carl Ritter. Alfred Russel Wallace. Paul Vidal de La Blache. Jared Diamond. Yifu Tuan. David Harvey. Milton Santos.  All of these geographers spent the greater part of the 18th, 19th and 20th century, hopping about the planet,...
Feature Stories

The Rise of AI in Teamwork; Taking the Team Out of I-work

Triona Ryan -
"There’s no ‘I’ in the word team." How many times has this old chestnut been trotted out by educators and coaches worldwide to inspire and entice reluctant collaborators? Too many, probably. Definitely so many that one definitive rejoinder is now...
Feature Stories

Our Community of Leprechauns; Just Stop Saying Thank You

Triona Ryan -
I knew my nap from my siesta, my Irish stew from my cocido and my Céili dancing from my flamenco. I thought I was solid on all fronts.  And then, Nanjing.  Nothing and no-one could have prepared me for the deep...
Feature Stories

You Share the Same Home; But Do You also Look Like Each Other?

Triona Ryan -
They are good for us, apparently. From the immune system to the health benefits to the souls, animals make us lead happier lives, or so the research goes.  One Harvard study boldly claims that “pet owners are less likely to...
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About Me

Educator, writer, minstrel and Collector of Rare and Marvelous Moments; Triona Ryan, born in Ireland, moved to Spain for the summer back in 2003 and stayed for a decade. Now based in Nanjing, China, she spends her free time feeding her cats, picking cushions off the floor and pondering the paradoxes of the human condition. She also sings, often and everywhere.
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