Academic biography

Dr Brenda McNally is a Research Ireland Pathway Fellow with DCU Institute for Future Media, Democracy and Society, School of Communications. Her research addresses urgent questions for climate communication to advance insights for broadening public engagement with climate policy as well as fostering democratic debate in response to rising climate misinformation and the influence of AI tools. A second line of research research explores the implications of emerging media technologies for environmental communication practice. 

She is currently PI on a four-year Research Ireland project investigating the evolving forms and mainstreaming of climate misinformation in Ireland to shed light on how regulatory and educational responses can address challenges in the information landscape. Her research has been published in WIREs Climate Change, Climatic Change, Environmental Science and Policy, Ecology and Society, Visual Studies and RTE Brainstorm among other others. She is currently a co-editor of a Thematic Collection on 'Just Transitions: People, Place and Pathways' accepted for publication in the Journal of the British Academy (expected 2026).  

Prior to joining DCU she was an Assistant Professor in Global Media and Communication at University of Galway and has held postdoctoral fellowships at UCD, Trinity College Dublin and Arizona State University. She has a BSc from UCD, an MSc in Science Communication and a PhD in Communications from DCU.