Mary was named the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders in March 2020. She is the former Executive Director of Front Line Defenders, an organisation she established in 2001 to meet the immediate security and protection needs of human rights defenders at risk around the world.  Mary is widely respected in the international human rights movement and has been a leading figure in developing rapid response mechanisms and institutional responses for HRDs.  Prior to Front Line Defenders, Mary was Director of the Irish Section of Amnesty International from 1988 to 2000. She became a Board member in 1975 and was elected Chair from 1983 to 1987. Mary was awarded the Irish Life WMB Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2008. In 2011, she received the Irish Tatler Woman of the Year Special Recognition Award.  In 2014, Mary was awarded the French insignia of Chevalier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur and an honorary degree of Doctor in Laws from Trinity College Dublin. In 2015, she was appointed Adjunct Professor in the School of Business Trinity College Dublin.

Mary Moynihan, MA, she/her, is an award-winning author of novels, poetry, films and plays, from Dublin, Ireland. Mary embarked upon her award-winning career as a writer in theatre and film and has garnered much acclaim for her plays, poetry and short film scripts, and for creating interdisciplinary artworks combining writing and photography presented in galleries and online. She established and became Artistic Director of Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality and is Artistic Curator for the annual Dublin Arts and Human Rights festival. Mary has an honours BA in Drama and Theatre Studies from Trinity College Dublin and an honours Masters in Film Production from TU Dublin.

After raising four children, now  adults, Mary dedicated her time to becoming a writer. She writes fiction for young people and adults featuring stories of courage, laughter, tragedy, happiness, love, death and action-packed adventures. Mary pens a series of articles titled Creative Reflections on Arts, Creativity, Leadership and Self-Esteem which appear in the Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality newsletter and on Mary’s website marymoynihan.ie

In her free time Mary loves to spend time with her four adult children and hang out with friends.  She swims in the sea all year round. She loves the ocean, sky and moon and has a spiritual connection to the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea, to the environs of Dublin bay and to the mystical landscapes of Valentia Island and the surrounding Iveragh peninsula in County Kerry, her spiritual home. She is a big fan of the Dublin Gaelic football and hurling teams.

Smashing Times

Mary is Artistic Director of Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality working collaboratively with artists and over fifty organisations across Ireland, Northern Ireland, Europe and internationally, using the arts to promote rights and values for all. Company patrons are Sabina Higgins; Joan Freeman, founder of Pieta House; Ger Ryan, actor and Tim Pat Coogan, writer and historian. Founding patrons were writers Maeve Binchy and Brian Friel.

Arts and Human Rights Festival

Mary is Artistic Curator for the annual, international Dublin Arts and Human Rights festival implemented by Smashing Times and Front Line Defenders with Amnesty International, Fighting Words, ICCL, NWCI, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Trócaire, Poetry Ireland and Irish Pen, and funded by The Arts Council. The festival highlights the extraordinary work of human rights defenders in Ireland and around the world, past and present, and the role of the arts and artists in promoting human rights today.

Awards

Mary’s work has won a number of awards, including the Allianz Business to Arts Special Judges DAA Arts Award at Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, the international and prestigious #ArtsAgainstCovid award from the Arts in Health International Foundation and an Arts Council Agility Award. Mary was awarded a Project Award from The Arts Council to write a new work with a range of collaborators titled The Feeling Soul, inspired by stories of women poets from ancient and modern Ireland.   

Mary is the author of the epic spoken word poem  ‘Ode to a Coolock Queen’’, written from a female perspective and exploring identity, gender, violence, passion, self-destruction and possible redemption. An attempt as Sylvia Plath says  ‘to be true to my own weirdnesses’. It is an oral storytelling narrative that is about a broader reflection on what it is to be born out of a working class environment.  This poem is in homage to all people from working-class communities who find their strength and become their own kings and queens like warriors from an ancient past.

As a playwright, Mary’s work includes the highly acclaimed The Woman is Present: Women’s Stories of WWII co-written with Paul Kennedy, Fiona Thompson and Féilim James;  Tales of Love and Loss featuring two monologues selected by President Michael D Higgins for performance at Áras an Uachtaráin, Constance and Her Friends and Grace and Joe for performance in 2023; In One Breath from the award-winning Testimonies(co-written with Paul Kennedy); Shadow of My Soul and May Our Faces Haunt You.

Mary’s film work includes the hour-long documentary Stories From the Shadows (co-directed with Mark Quinn); the short film Tell Them Our Names,  (directed by Mary, co-written with Paul Kennedy) inspired by women’s stories of WWII and selected for the London Eye International Film Festival and Kerry Film Festival; the creative documentary Women in an Equal Europe; the short film Courageous Women, inspired by powerful women’s stories from the 1916 to 1923 decade of commemorations period in Irish history; In Time, a poem-film created in response to the changing landscape of our world today in a time of pandemic (written by Mary Moynihan, co-directed with Mark Quinn); and The Shoah: A Survivor’s Memory – The World’s Legacy, adapted from the writings of French woman Simone Veil (1927-2017), a French lawyer, politician and feminist, Holocaust survivor and first female President of the European Parliament.

Mary has a focus on using historical memory in her artistic practice as inspiration for the creation of original artworks. A number of her writings highlight stories of ordinary yet extraordinary women who stood up for the rights of others with a focus on the Holocaust, WWII and the revolutionary period in Irish history.