Roles and Affiliations

I am an Associate Professor of Sociology in the School of Human Development, DCU, where I teach courses across the range of programme offerings on the Humanities (Human Development) and Education programmes.  Prior to joining DCU, I taught at Teachers College, Columbia University, University College Dublin, and have also taught at SciencesPo University in Paris, as a Visiting Professor. I hold a PhD in Comparative Education/Sociology from Columbia University, New York, as well as Masters Degrees in Sociology (MSc. in Applied Social Research) from Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and the Sociology of Education (EdM) from Teachers College, Columbia University. My undergraduate degree was in (Single Honours) Psychology from University College Dublin (UCD). 

From  2016-2021, I served as Research Convener in the School of Human Development and I have served as a member of the DCU Research Ethics Committee since 2016.   In 2021, I was elected to serve as a board member of  the DCU Governing Authority, the body charged with the overall Governance of the University.

I am a co-editor of Irish Educational Studies, the official journal of the Educational Studies Association of Ireland (ESAI) and I have previously served on the editorial board of the journal Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review. I also serve on the steering committees of the Centre for Human Rights and Citizenship Education, DCU and the UBUNTU Network for Sustainable Development and am an affiliate member of the Anti-Bullying Centre, DCU and the Educational Disadvantage Centre, also at DCU.

With  Dr. Yoko Mochizuki, I am currently co-editing the climate and youth section of the Springer Handbook of Child and Youth Studies (with Professor Helen Cahill, Professor Johanna Wyn and Associate Professor Hernan Cuervo).

Teaching 

My main teaching responsibilities are in the Sociology of Childhood, the Sociology of Education and Advanced Research Methods.  I teach sociology of childhood on the BA in Human Development  programme (HD115: Social Contexts of Childhood), Sociology of Education (Ed2025: Sociology) and Sociology of Childhood (Ed1011: Constructions of Childhood) on the BEd and PME (primary) programmes (Ed8055). I also teach advanced qualitative research methods to PhD students taking the Graduate Training Element (GTE) modules within the Faculty of Education (IE602).   With Jones Irwin, Ico-ordinate the BEd specialism in the Foundation Disciplines of Education. I co-ordinate the introductory module on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Education and teach (with Marie Flynn) the Sociology, Families and Schooling module.  

 Research-led Teaching &  Continuing Professional Development

From 2019-2022, I was the DCU partner of a collaborative study conducted in partnership between students and staff from UniversityCollege Cork, Dublin City University, and Maynooth University called Disciplines Inquiringinto Societal Challenges (DISCs).  Launched in 2019 with funding from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching andLearning in Higher Education, the project aimed to better understand the views and experiences of staff across disciplines regarding their professional development in the themes of gender consciousness, interculturalism, and community.   The DISCs website discs.ie contains a valuable repository of resources and guidance documents to support academic staff and learners who wish to begin exploring, develop, or improve upon their own social justice-oriented pedagogies. Specific resources include: an extensive literature review; tools for cultivating digital skills; key readings and texts; sample course/module syllabi; websites and blogs; a self-assessment tool for academics and two substantial guidance documents based on insights from the DISCs project, one on ‘Teaching for Social Justice in Irish Higher Education’ and another on ‘The Development of Teaching for Social Justice in the Irish Higher Education Sector which can be can be accessed at https://discs.ie/discs-guidance-documents.  Collectively, these documents contain a wealth of practitioner guidance on teaching for social justice in higher education, including: planning a diverse, student-centred curriculum; learning engagement (relationships and pedagogy); validating student prior knowledge; creating an inclusive climate; participatory and inclusive teaching methodologies; teaching approaches that contribute to the creation of a welcoming environment for diverse students; inclusive assessment practices etc.

Research 

My most recent research considers the educationally and socially transformative possibilities that exist when emotion, affect and feeling are viewed as essential elements of  teaching and learning, rather than peripheral or irrelevant to education.  It argues that that coming to a deeper understanding of how learners feel about various social injustices – as well as how they actively negotiate, contest and interpret them – is a necessary starting point for effective social justice education.   My forthcoming manuscript – Affective Pedagogies (Routledge)--highlights the need to attend to the felt aspects of teaching and learning, with a particular focus on emotions that surface when learners are asked to bear witness to, or to see themselves as implicated in, various social and global injustices.  This work also illuminates the importance of positive affect – including laughter, humour, and an overall atmosphere of playfulness –in teaching and learning and in the wider re-imagining of societies. 

The emergence of a global consensus about the importance of equipping children with social-emotional skills in order to enhance or ‘optimise’ their chances of success, to transform social inequality and to alleviate global threats and challenges is another major focus of my work.  The project considers the broader political-economic, ideological and global governance context within which Social Emotional Learning (SEL) has originated and flourished and identifies key cultural drivers and conditions of possibility that have led to SEL’s prominence within wider discussions of global justice and its increasing alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).   

 The sociology of climate change is another major focus of my work, particularly as it relates to the intersection between individual consumer practices and wider ideological and institutional forces.  I have devised a SocialEcology of Responsibility Framework (SERF) to illuminate the complex interconnections between the micro world of everyday encounters and the operations and influence of institutions and macro forces of economy, culture, media and ideologies.  The SERF documents how the wider social, political, economic, and cultural environment promotes harmful consumerist philosophies and practices amongst individuals, while helping to explain the context within which individuals become such enthusiastic practitioners of these harms (Agnew 2013). The framework depicts individuals as ‘implicated subjects’ who form part of a wider infrastructure or machinery that produces ecological degradation and illuminates the need for radical  change within and across multiple scales and domains (Rothberg 2019).