Siún is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Rural Creativity at the University of the Highlands and Islands (Shetland College). She is Module Leader for 'Communities of Practice' within the MA Art and Social Practice.

Siún is PI for ‘Home and Belonging’, a new 3 year project funded by Life Changes Trust. The project is an arts-based exploration of home and belonging with care experienced young people, their communities and partner organisations.

The Home and Belonging project aims to

• provide care experienced young people with an opportunity to reflect on what it means to be ‘at home’ in private, public and community spaces

• enable young people to develop a stronger sense of home and belonging through active participation and leadership in community-building creative exploration

• transform how partner organisations work alongside care experienced young people, enabling young people to have a different experience of the places and communities in which they live.

Partner organisations include Who Cares? Scotland, Shetland Islands Council, Shetland Arts, Hjaltland Housing Association, OPEN Peer Education Network, and Orkney Children and Young People’s Partnership.

In 2018-19 Siún carried out a project called 'Micro-manufacturing and place-based maker cultures: textile production and skill transmission in Shetland and the west of Ireland', funded with a Carnegie Trust Research Incentive Grant.

In 2016-17 Siún conducted a study of the contemporary value of Shetland hand knitting in partnership with a voluntary organisation, ShetlandPeerieMakkers.

From 2013-2016 she was Research Assistant on the Leverhulme-funded project ‘Plantation to Peace: Derry/Londonderry as the UK’s first City of Culture’ in the School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Queen’s University Belfast.

Her PhD research in Social Anthropology (QUB, 2010) examined the redevelopment of Belfast’s Falls Road area as an Irish language-themed cultural hub.

Siún’s research interests include creative industries, place and space, tourism and textile making.

Twitter: @S_Carden