While on a residency in Cork, Ireland, Hornek began her research into the indigenous Irish nomadic people, the Irish Travellers. Due to the loss of unoccupied land, modernization, and strict new trespass laws passed in recent decades, they have been forced to settle down. Their history is set against Ireland’s transformation from one of the poorest, rural countries in Western Europe to one of the wealthiest. The Irish belief in mortgages and bricks-and-mortar led to the country’s present financial destruction, which left highly indebted households, ghost estates, and giant empty monoliths.