National University of Ireland, Maynooth
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Rediscovering The Voice, I Never Knew Was Taken.
Get PDFMy research question is how people with care experience, experience education and learning. This question is not just an academic process, but a personal one, as I am a person with care experience. I decided an autoethnography scribed through journal entries was the most fitting method to ensure a humanistic, heartfelt, and meaningful approach was reflected.
I use my autobiographical research to allow the reader to understand what parts of my experience felt like from inside and outside of the system of social care. This research illustrates both truth and emotion and above all, inserts the personal voice of a child, who felt forgotten, unseen, silenced and misplaced.
My findings are Systemic Failures, Feelings of Oppression, Difference and Displacement, Disability, Intersectionality and Empowerment. The fourth finding is Reclaiming my Own Power.
The theoretical research outlined in this thesis is explained through Freirean framework, focusing on the challenging of oppressions and social norms, opposing social beliefs and through my own data adding to limited research.
Adult education is where I learnt how systems appear within the world of theory, how they are formed, how they impact what we choose to believe, who we are and who we become.
My findings emphasise the need for legislation focusing on people with care experience, and the immediate creation and installation of an MGT practice
The Impact of Digital Transformation on Higher Education Institutions in Ireland: A Managership Perspective
Get PDFThis study investigates the drivers, organisational readiness, and outcomes of digital
transformation in publicly funded Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Ireland. It explores
how Irish HEIs navigate digital transformation. While digital transformation is critical for
organisational efficiency, and public value realisation, existing research often neglects its
strategic, operational, and cultural dimensions, particularly from the standpoint of HEI
managers responsible for the pragmatic translation of governance into practice amid competing
global and local priorities.
To address these gaps, this study employs a critical realist ontology and introduces the HEIDT
conceptual framework, which conceptualises digital transformation as an emergent, nonlinear
process shaped by multi-dimensional factors. Using mixed methods, the study
synthesises survey and interview data. It finds that Irish HEIs experience three concurrent
change types: exogenous rapid (e.g., COVID-19 adaptation), exogenously driven gradual (e.g.,
policy-driven mergers), and endogenous gradual (e.g., ongoing digitalisation). However,
organisational inertia, power asymmetries between leadership and academics, and resistance
to change limit HEIs’ ability to undertake more ambitious transformations. Structural and
resource constraints, compounded by managerialist governance that conflates efficiency with
institutional legitimacy, further constrain digital transformation efforts.
This study advances theoretical, practical, and policy-based understandings of HEI digital
transformation. The HEI-DT framework offers a novel approach to conceptualising digital
transformation. By adopting a critical realist ontology, the study examines the external forces
and internal organisational factors shaping digital transformation. Recommendations include
employing mixed-methods research grounded in critical realism, and utilising the HEI-DT
framework to guide digital transformation initiatives. The study advocates for a shift from
metric-driven, top-down governance to context-sensitive, values-based policy that safeguards
academic autonomy and public value. Emphasising collaborative leadership, stakeholder
partnerships, and regional engagement, it highlights the importance of co-designing digital
strategies to ensure alignment with HEI missions. These contributions offer a pragmatic
foundation for advancing sustainable digital transformation in higher education
Creating a comprehensive model to support greenhouse gas emission strategies: A case-study for Ireland
Get PDFClimate change mitigation policies should be supported by a scientific infrastructure that includes inventories,
models and observations; this infrastructure could provide an independent assessment of greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions and contribute to the formulation of effective policies at national and regional scale. However, current
policies are largely based on sectoral inventories that use land-use and land-cover information to estimate GHG
emissions. Other parts of the infrastructure are not well developed at national scales. Observations of GHG
concentrations and fluxes are relatively few and not designed to assess net emissions from complex landscapes (e.
g. rural landscapes, with diverse natural and anthropogenic sources and sinks). Moreover, land-surface models
are rarely employed at these scales to assess the inventory in the context of observations. In this paper we outline
the development of this infrastructure for the island of Ireland.
We apply an enhanced version of the Weather and Research Forecasting model (WRF-chem); this model
simulates the atmospheric mixing of GHGs based on anthropogenic emissions and biogenic net contributions
over natural, rural and urban land cover types. Model results for selected winter and summer periods are
evaluated against meteorological observations and measurements of CO2 concentrations and Net Ecosystem
Exchange (NEE), derived from available flux and atmospheric monitoring sites. While anthropogenic emissions
of Carbon Dioxide dominate over urban areas, emissions of Methane are linked to grasslands and dairy farming,
with forests and peatlands acting as either sources/sinks depending on season and weather. This model framework provides a tool for identifying the profile of net GHG emissions at national and local scales and the
development and evaluation of place-based mitigation policies
Nexus of employability, work climate, and service charter's effectiveness: USEM model and self-determination theory perspective.
Get PDFThis study aims to understand how 'employability' factors and 'work climate' affect the effective implementation of service charter protocols in the public sector context. The study employed a quantitative method anchored on the Understanding-Skillfulness-Efficacy belief-metacognition (USEM) model and self-determination theory, utilising the convenience sampling method in surveying 402 graduate employees of the civil service in Ghana. The findings confirm that skillfulness, efficacy belief, and metacognition employability elements derived from the USEM employability model significantly influence the service charter's effectiveness. Meanwhile, 'work climate' significantly moderates the 'efficacy-belief-service charters' effectiveness (SCE)' relationship. However, understanding the subject matter did not significantly impact SCE. This study makes a novel contribution to the services literature by addressing how 'employability' elements and 'work climate' interact to influence service charters' effectiveness, an area of study needing more attention in services literature
The digital turn in planning and the production of ‘good enough’ planning systems
Get PDFThe digitialization of planning has taken place in a context where planning work is on-going and cannot be halted, and in which there are embedded institutional and technical systems and practices, as well as a number of technical, regulatory and socio-cultural data frictions. This context has led to a sub-optimizing approach to digitialization. In this paper, we examine the digital mediation of planning through an in-depth case study of a multi-scale planning development and control data ecosystem in Ireland. We detail the incrementalist nature of the digital turn in planning and how this institutionalizes a ‘good enough’ digitialized planning system; that is, a system that is functional and performs essential tasks, but not necessarily in an optimal manner and which is always open to potential improvements. We develop a conceptual basis for assessing ‘good enough’ and through its application contend that ‘good enough’ planning is a sufficient and reasonable state of affairs given the substantive challenges of creating and maintaining a complex data ecosystem and that there are incremental limits to achieving ‘better planning’. As such, any technological solutionist claims promising to radically reconfigure and fix planning’s operation shortcomings, such as the introduction of artificial intelligence tools, require careful assessment
Textual Transfer, Irish Remedy Collections, and the Vernacularisation of Medical Learning in Late Medieval Europe
Get PDFThe abstract is included in the text
Property and Planning Data Ecosystem (2025), v 1.0
No full textThis spreadsheet relates to on-going or recently published, longitudinal datasets; older discontinued datasets or one-off studies are not included
Embedding Disability Rights in Cultural Policy: Lessons from Spain
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The ERC DANCING Project Final Report.
Get PDFThis report presents an overview of the past 5 years of research led under the European Research Council (ERC) funded project ‘Protecting the Right to Culture of Persons with Disabilities and Enhancing Cultural Diversity through European Union (EU) Law: Exploring New Paths – DANCING’. It describes the project, its objectives and ambitions, as well as delves into its organisational approaches and dissemination strategy. On the whole, the report showcases how DANCING has advanced the state of knowledge and contributed to methodological innovation. It further discusses the extent to which DANCING contributed to interdisciplinary scholarship on disability rights, particularly on the right of persons with disabilities to participate in cultural life, and supported the shaping of EU disability law as a standalone field of academic research. In that regard, the report shows that DANCING also enriched the broader scholarly debate on the EU integration, and on non-doctrinal methodological approaches to EU law. The impact of DANCING extends beyond scholarship, and the report further presents how the project endeavoured to effect social and policy change in the Cultural and Creative Sector (CCS).
DANCING comprised four different Work Packages (WP). Three of them relate to the key objectives of the project (experiential, normative and theoretical), while the fourth focuses on translating the research into practical tools for change which affect various stakeholders of the project. DANCING embraced a socio-legal perspective, and pursued an analysis of law that directly engaged with the social contexts, practices and stakes to which legal norms apply. Consistent with this perspective, and in order to achieve the three objectives indicated above, DANCING’s research strategy combined legal doctrinal research, qualitative research and arts-based research.
Over the past five years, DANCING produced groundbreaking research. The project shed light on the barriers to, and facilitators of, cultural participation experienced by persons with disabilities and how they affect the wider cultural domain. It provided a normative exploration of how the EU has used - and can use in the future - its full range of competences to make the CCS more inclusive of, and more accessible to, persons with disabilities. It also looked at the intertwining between the promotion of accessibility and inclusivity and the enhancement of cultural diversity. The project also articulated a new theorisation of the promotion of cultural diversity as encompassing disability within the EU legal order. Such theorisation underpins several of the scholarly outputs released in the last part of the project or currently in press.
The findings of the DANCING project were disseminated beyond academic circles through a range of initiatives, including non-academic publications and public events, aimed at raising awareness among the broadest possible audience. DANCING’s ambition, innovative research methods, and numerous achievements contributed to unveiling both the normative and practical dimensions of participation in cultural life for people with disabilities, while opening new avenues for future interdisciplinary research