Quick Facts
Biography
Laura Angela Collins is an Indigenous Mincéir (Irish Traveler).
Early life
Collins was born and raised in Bermondsey, London to Irish parents and attended the Brit’s schools for performing arts.
Her grandmother, Angelina Collins renamed Angela, lies in a mass grave in St Finbarrs cemetery in County Cork with 72 other women after working for 27 years in a Magdalene laundry. Collins campaigned for her grandmother's exhumation and for the crimes of the Irish government and Catholic Church to be acknowledged.
Her mother, Mary Teresa Collins, is a survivor of a abusive industrial school, and a child resident of St. Vincent’s Magdalene laundryand a county home. It was run by the Sisters of Mercy. That group is not within the terms of the investigatory commission's scope although it was named in the Ryan report.
Career
Collins has published her research regarding Irish travelers and the Tuam Mother and Baby Home in Galway where 800 babies are in a mass grave in Tuam Galway.
Collins has done independent research on Irish institutions such as Industrial schools, Ireland’s mother and baby homes and the Magdalene laundries. She has been a critic of the mother and baby home Investigation commission and past investigations into child abuse conducted by the Irish government.
Collins wrote The Tinker Menace. She chairs the organisations Justice 4 All Women & Children and Travelling People Worldwide.
Collins was interviewed on RTE Radio 1. Corks 96 FM and Niall Boylan Show.
On March 19, 2017, The Sunday Mirror and Irish Sunday Mirror quoted her, saying she "had identified 335 known traveler's surnames in the 796 remains buried at the Catholic-run mother and baby home in County Galway."
In 2019, Collins won the first ever Irish Traveler pride award in inter-sectional she was presented it on day by researcher Catherine Corless.