University College Cork

I am a lecturer in the School of Applied Social Studies since 2004. I teach research methodology and social policy related courses to undergraduate and postgraduate students across colleges. I am also the Course Director of the M.Soc.Sc. (Social Policy) programme. 

Iam originally from San Sebastian, in the Basque Country. I studied Political Science and Sociology in the University of the Basque Country (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea) and Kingston University, UK (Erasmus). I did a MSc in Politics in the Department of Government, University College Cork. The title of my thesis was 'The Political Impact of Uncertainty and Conflict: Public Policy in the Risk Society'. I completed my doctoral research 'A Critical Governmentality Study of the Smoking Ban in Ireland'  also in University College Cork, in the School of Applied Social Studies. My doctoral research focused on the introduction of the smoking ban in Ireland. The key purpose of the research was to explore how power was exercised by exploring the identities that were promoted in order to stimulate behaviour change and achieve a successful exercise in the ‘conduct of conduct’ (Foucault).

My research interests are wide and increasingly, I have become interested in the politics of public health and health promotion. I am interested in the social processes that have resulted in ‘health’ becoming a key value in contemporary society, and exploring health as a symbolic category informing perceptions of normality and well-being. As an example of this work, I have recently (2018-2020) led the UCC team’s involvement in the PEACH project, a community-engagement collaboration between a multidisciplinary team of researchers at UCC (Social Policy, Childhood Studies and Education) and two neighbouring all-girls schools located in the North side of Cork city. This project aimed to explore what we can learn about wellbeing from listening to what school going children tell us about their lives. In order to gather these students’ voices and experiences, we used a diverse set of participatory and creative research methods, such as the creation of Support Balloon Clouds, a Community Mapping exercise, Participatory Photo Mapping (PPM) and Photo Elicitation focus groups.  

More recently, I've been working on a project about how young people with Type 1 Diabetes experience the transition from parental to self-management of T1D with colleagues from Marketing and Managment and Medicine. This project, funded by the IRC New Foundations scheme, is part of a larger project that seeks to increase understanding and awareness of the lived experiences of teenagers with T1D and contribute to interdisciplinary research in this field, bringing social science insights to the study of autonomy transition in relation to T1D.

My research interests are wide, and I have worked in a number of EU projects over the years. Increasingly, I have become interested in the politics of public health and health promotion. I am interested in the social processes that have resulted in ‘health' becoming a key value in contemporary society, and exploring health as a symbolic category informing perceptions of normality and well-being. In particular, I am interested in the body as a site at which power struggles are enacted and reflected, and exploring how power is exercised by producing and ‘making up' citizens. My research, therefore, seeks to explore how public health interventions contribute to the constitution of the contemporary human body.

My doctoral research focused on the introduction of the smoking ban in Ireland. The key purpose of the research was to explore how power was exercised by exploring the identities that were promoted in order to stimulate behaviour change and achieve a successful exercise in the `conduct of conduct'. I was also interested in the regulative and ideological dimensions of the discourses deployed in this context.

 

Research for the community:

I am also actively involved in promoting student research in the community and I have been actively involved in establishing a Science Shop in U.C.C. Our goal is to facilitate academic research within the broader community through project work via students and staff and to provide community and voluntary groups with access to knowledge and expertise within University. In our effort to establish a Science Shop in UCC, we have been successful in obtaining funding as part of a wider cross-national research project funded by the EU 7th framework, PERARES. This is a four year research project which aims to collect a profile of Science Shops in Europe, conduct a comparative analysis, as well as establish an online cross-national Science shop forum.

More recently (2018-2020), I led a the PEACH project, a community-engagement collaboration between a multidisciplinary team of researchers at UCC (Social Policy, Childhood Studies and Education) and two neighbouring all-girls schools located in the North side of Cork city.