Academic biography

Dr Niamh Merriman is an Assistant Professor in Community Health in Dublin City University (DCU) School of Nursing, Psychotherapy and Community Health. She is currently leading the HRB-funded 3-year HipCog Study: evaluating the impact of cognitive impairment on outcomes for older adults with hip fracture (previously at University College Dublin). The project aims to support the national Irish Hip Fracture Database to drive improvements in care quality following hip fracture for people with cognitive disorders throughout the hip fracture care pathway.

Prior to joining the DCU School of Nursing, Psychotherapy and Community Health in 2025, Niamh was a HRB Fellow in the School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science, University College Dublin. She was previously a HRB Collaboration in Ireland for Clinical Effectiveness Reviews (CICER) Research Fellow, based in the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) and Trinity College Dublin, where she conducted evidence syntheses to support the development of evidence-based recommendations in national clinical guidelines and national clinical audits. She also worked as a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Health Psychology in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), where her research focused on diagnosis and rehabilitation of post-stroke cognitive impairment.

Her PhD was in Experimental Psychology, obtained from the School of Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience in Trinity College Dublin in 2016 and focused on ageing and spatial navigational abilities. She has extensive interdisciplinary experience across experimental psychology, population health, and computer graphics and expertise across a range of research methods, including qualitative and quantitative research methodology, complex intervention design, experimental study design, and evidence synthesis.