Dr Tom Moylan, the newly appointed Glucksman Professor of contemporary writing at the University of Limerick, has taken the circuitous route to teaching in the Treaty City. Anne Byrne reports

Immersing yourself in the utopian societies meticulously imagined by science fiction writers such as Ursula Le Guin while teaching the students of community colleges and new universities in the US and Britain might seem like an exercise in escapism.

However, Tom Moylan, the newly appointed professor of contemporary writing at UL, has built a research career around utopian writings. "The last surge of utopian writing was in the 19th century, writers like William Morris. The early 20th century was a time for dystopia. Then, in the 1970s, people like Le Guin started to take the values of the 1960s and 1970s and apply them, in the realm of science fiction, to imagine what alternative societies would be like. Utopian writing provides a contrast to what exists and stimulates further thought and action."

Moylan says his choice of research subject was informed by his Christian-left politics. "I was a conscientious objector. I was a pretty-active anti-war campaigner. It very much affected my education. I started college as biology major, interested in medicine. By my second year, I realised I was reading English literature and philosophy."

His parents were Irish immigrants to the US. Moylan went to Catholic schools - however, he eschewed the traditional Irish all-singing all-dancing immigrant culture in favour of hanging out in the park with his friends."I was very involved in the civil rights movement. I very much wanted to be part of a community as well as studying. That led to my MA in English and then I started an MA in theology." His political activism prompted him to pause, he says. He stopped midway through his theology course and took up a teaching job at a small campus of the University of Wisconsin.

"I taught there from 1968 to 1990, with some interruptions (mainly research fellowships and readerships). After a few years I began my PhD at Milwaukee. At that stage, I was divorced and co-parenting." His daughters are now 30 and 32, working in Dublin and Los Angeles.

"I developed an interest in science fiction and utopian societies. This dovetailed with my social and political interests because now it wasn't just a question of civil rights and war, but it was also a question of feminism.

"Not only did I agree with it, but I had two daughters in whom it was embodied."

Working in what was essentially a community college meant teaching four courses a term, three of which were writing. That added up to 75 essays a week. "I don't dislike teaching, but I think I've done my share," he says, as he looks forward to taking up his new research professorship in July.

Speaking to EL in Galway, where he currently has a readership at the university, he says: "In the 1970s, I began to realise that Ireland wasn't just the dull green piece of nostalgia that I thought my father was talking about. You would think that what would have interested me would have been the politics, civil rights and the Troubles. In fact, it was the early folk revival, including the music of the Clancy Brothers.

"My father was a docker, a very gentle and loving person, but it was my mother I talked with. The music suddenly opened doors and I found myself talking to my father." In 1980, together with his father (his mother had died) and his older sister, Moylan found himself visiting relatives from Dublin to Galway to Donegal. "Endless kitchens with endless cups of tea and shots of whiskey and extended family I never knew I had." Three years later, Moylan took a sabbatical. His daughters Katy and Sarah were aged 13 and 11, and he considered going to Mexico until a friend offered him the use of a home in Youghal. It was a warm summer and Moylan says he "was conned" by the weather.

The notes for his dissertation were coming over via surface mail and he had no work to do for a while. The 1983 abortion referendum was under way and Moylan says: "People were familiar with right-wing American Christians. With due respect to their position, I wanted to show that some Americans believe in choice. I met the entire Youghal 'no' campaign and became involved in the town in a way I didn't expect." He quotes utopian philosopher Ernst Bloch on the principle of hope (heimat) and says, in some ways, he felt he was arriving home. "I stayed a second year, teaching media studies part-time at Crawford College. My kids had made friends. I was keeping an eye out for more permanent jobs." During his time in Cork, his dissertation became a book, Demand the Impossible. Published in 1986, it focuses on science fiction and the utopian imagination.

Back in the US, life changed with a residential fellowship in the Banff Centre for the Arts in the Canadian Rockies. That led to a job in George Mason University, where Moylan helped develop a cultural studies programme at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

"At that point, American studies was very much focused on the US. I expanded it to include South America, the Caribbean and Canada . . . it was very exciting, and, finally, my own research was taking off." In 1999, he moved "further east" to a readership at Liverpool John Moores University, a former polytechnic. "The idea was to develop programmes in cultural studies and to help build a research culture. The real plus of new universities and community colleges is that they are close to the community and job-driven. The minus is the lack of research culture. The people at these places teach really hard - you have to really work at building an atmosphere where young faculty get support." He set up a mentoring programme and says he really liked Liverpool despite the strains imposed by Britain's tough Research Assessment Exercise.

In his new post at UL, he also hopes to contribute to the fostering of a research culture while pursuing his research. The college of humanities there is poised to grow and develop, he says.

"I thought I would take the whole notion of utopian thought and social dreaming and look at Irish culture through this utopian lens, starting back with the Brendan voyage. There is a relationship between social dreaming and what actually happens. When people think of better and best societies, it's not just escapism. "