Academic biography

Caitriona is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Education, Dublin City University. Prior to this, she spent thirteen years as a primary teacher in the north east inner city of Dublin. Caitriona now lectures in the area of history pedagogy and her expertise is in the areas of historical enquiry and the development of children’s historical thinking skills. Caitriona teaches on a broad range of courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in DCU. These include: the Bachelor of Education, Professional Masters in Education and the Master of Education in Literacy Professional Practice (disciplinary literacy) programmes. She also coordinates a number of history specialism modules. Her PhD research focused on the use of learning trajectories in history education to challenge student epistemic beliefs about history in order to allow them to think, read and write as historians. Her other research interests include: the learning and teaching of history at primary and post-primary level, heritage and place-based education, digital technologies in teaching history (VR and AR), teaching controversial/contested issues in primary history and disciplinary literacy (focusing on reading and writing like a historian). Caitriona is a member of the steering committee of the Centre for Human Rights and Citizenship (CHRCE) at DCU and is a member of the DCU Educational Disadvantage Centre. More internationally, Caitriona is also an executive committee member of the History Educators International Research Network (HEIRNET), sits on the executive board of Public History Weekly and is the Irish coordinator of the History Teachers Education Network (HTEN). She is a member of the advisory board of Panta Rei, a Scopus indexed history didactics journal.