Career
She was formerly a Professor of Irish Studies and Sociology at London Metropolitan University and director of its Institute for the Study of European Transformations. She has been Visiting Professor at: New York University, Columbia University and Victoria University, Melbourne. Her current research interests centre on migrations and diasporas.
She has been a key figure in the documentation of The Irish Diaspora.
An important analysis of nineteenth-century attitudes by Hickman and Bronwen Walter showed that the "Irish Catholic" was one viewed as an "other" or a different race in the construction of the British nationalist myth.