Dr Colm O'Reilly Biography

Colm O’Reilly, Ph.D is the Director of Centre for Talented Youth, Ireland (CTYI) at Dublin City University. CTYI provides fast paced classes for academically talented students aged 6-17 years old, from all over Ireland and overseas. Colm has worked in the area of gifted and talented education for the last 30 years, as director of CTYI and as an adjunct faculty member at the Institute of Education at DCU. Under Colm’s leadership, CTYI has grown exponentially and now serves over 6000 primary and post-primary students a year, across multiple summer programmes, Saturday courses, an Early University Entrance programme and online classes. CTYI has a team of twelve full time staff members, three PhD students and about three hundred part time staff members per year. Colm has contributed expertise and consultancy to the Department of Education on gifted education, and recently co-wrote a research paper for the Department on gifted education in four countries and has presented to the working group on gifted education. Colm has edited books, produced reports, written articles and presented papers at numerous conferences around Europe and worldwide. Most recently, he was the keynote speaker for the 2024 European Council of High Ability Conference, in Greece.

Colm has been involved in numerous successful EU funding bids and has designed online teacher training programmes for the European Commission in 2023 through the European Schools Education Platform and in 2019 through the Erasmus Plus programme. He has delivered lectures to initial teacher education programmes at various universities around Ireland.  His research interests include working with gifted students in out of school programmes and their academic and social development. In 2023, he won the A. Harry Passow International Award for Leadership in Gifted Education from the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children. He is the first European to win this award, which recognises outstanding contribution to the field worldwide. He is currently the President of the European Council for High Ability (ECHA) and is on the General Council for the European Talent Support Network.

He is currently co-editing the European Handbook of Gifted Education, a 40 chapter book to be published by Routledge Press in 2025.

Colm has supervised numerous PhD students in the area of gifted education, on topics including acceleration, technology use for gifted programmes and identification, gifted students in DEIS schools, gifted LGBTQ students, gifted students’ experiences of bullying and gifted students transition from primary to post-primary school.

Furthermore Colm is well known for his spirit of collaboration to promote gifted education across the world. Within Ireland Colm has worked with the School of Education at TCD, the School of Psychology at UCD, the School of Education at Mary Immaculate College Limerick, the Access programme at UCC, and Youth Academy at the University of Galway. In the UK he has worked with Potential Plus and the Scottish Network for Able Pupils in Glasgow. Across Europe he has collaborated and given guest lectures at universities in Greece, Germany, Hungary, Slovenia, Lithuania, Norway and many others. He has worked with all the major gifted programmes in the United States. He sits on the advisory board of the Centre for Gifted Education at the College of William and Mary and the international board of the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University and organises an exchange programme with the Herberger Academy at Arizona State University and is currently working with Rutgers University on a staff training programme for gifted students.