Professor Elizabeth Kiely is a Vice-Head for Research and Innovation in her school and Research Associate with the Institute for Social Science in the 21st Century and Board Member of the Future Humanities Institute in UCC.  

She is Chair of the Oral History Network of Ireland, a member of the National Museum of Ireland's Human Remains Advisory Panel and the Irish Penal Abolition Network. She is Interventions Editor for the Journal Justice, Power and Resistance.

Her research and teaching interests include social policy, particularly penal policy, youth policy and practice. She teaches social research in her school and at postgraduate levels beyond her school.  

Co-authored and co-edited books include 'The Criminalisation of Social Policy in Neoliberal Societies' (with K. Swirak, 2021, Bristol University Press); 'Sexualities and Irish Society' (with M. Leane, 2014, Orpen Press); 'Irish Women at Work 1930-1960, An Oral History' (with M.Leane 2012, Irish Academic Press);  'Youth and Community Work in Ireland: Critical Perspectives (with C.Forde & R. Meade, 2009, Blackhall).  She co-edited Volume 59 Issue 4 | Community Development Journal | Oxford Academic in 2024 on the topic of Community Development, the Carceral State and the Necessary Challenge of Penal Abolitionism. 

She is presently leading the Lace, Life & Lore Digital Storytelling Project, a collaborative project being undertaken with a team of academics and students in UCC and the Traditional Lace Makers of Ireland (funded by Collective Social Futures). She led an IRC (2018) funded study of fathers views and experiences of supervised child parent contact; a study of single fathers experiences of the facilitators and obstacles to shared parenting in the Irish context (for Treoir and funded by the Community Foundation for Ireland). She was team member on the CSF (2023) funded Transformative Justice Project, the ESRC / IRC (2021) the Research Network RIFNET: Reconstituting Irish Families and and the HRB funded (2020) Covid 19: Estimating the Burden of the Disease in the Community. She is Project Affiliate on the NORF QSA*Net: Promoting Open Research in Qualitative Social Science (PI Prof Jane Gray).

Elizabeth Kiely is an interdisciplinary scholar grounded in critical social policy. She has conducted research and published work in Penal Policy, Youth Policy, Gender and Women's Studies, Family Policy and Qualitative Research.   Her current research interests include: 

(a) Exploring the troubling intersections between social policy and criminal justice and uncovering the implications for those who are poor, marginalised and justice involved. These intersections across diverse contexts are explored in the book co-authored (with K. Swirak) The Criminalisation of Social Policy in Neoliberal Societies (Bristol University Press, 2023).  She is continuing work in this field by critically interrogating the actions of the carceral state as well as significant developments in the digitization of welfare states, which disregard accountability and human rights safeguards, impacting the most marginal in our societies. See for instance a Special Issue of the Community Development Journal, (2024) which she co-edited with Rosie Meade and Katharina Swirak, and which includes a collection of papers focusing on what penal abolitionist praxis offers in terms of challenging and dismantling the carceral state in different parts of the world. 

(b) Bringing new insights and critical analysis to bear on gender and family policies and practices. One of many examples here is the Irish government / IRC research she led, which  explored how parents / guardians and their children in Ireland navigate the worlds of sexual culture and consumption. It is published in a report for government (2015) and in a number of journal articles. Another example is her co-authored article (with Meade and O' Donovan) 'Cruel Optimism' in the Universities published in Gender, Work and Organization (2023)which provides a much needed critical intervention into the ongoing challenge of promoting gender equality in universities.  

(c) Young people, youth work and youth policy.  She has a track record of research and publication in this field but presently, she is particularly interested in exploring how the concept of child / youth sexual citizenship can be used to good effect when exploring the politics of sex education.  See for instance a chapter entitled 'The Relationships and Sexuality Education Review: Advancing sexual Citizenship' (2023) which was published in Gornicka and Doyle (Eds) in Sex and Sexualities in Ireland (Palgrave, Macmillan).  

Undergraduate Modules 

• SS2007 / SS3112  Penal Policy and Practice
• SS3011 / SS5023 Youth Policy and Practice
• SS3210 Deviance, Welfare & Justice 

Postgraduate Modules

• PG7044 Researching Through a Gender Lens
• PG6024 Qualitative Research Inquiry
• SS7003 Research Methods & Skills 1
• WS6007 Research Skills Part 1
• SS6809 Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Awareness 
• SS6811 Social Research
• SS6817 Childhood, Youth & Society 

Year: 2025
Name: David O' Driscoll
Intitution: NUI (UCC)
Degree: PHD
Thesis: Multidimensional Household Poverty in Ireland, Child and Maternal Psychopathology Outcomes.

Year 2018

Name: Robert Bolton
Intitution: NUI (UCC)
Degree: PHD
Thesis: It feels like you’re in Funderland’: an ethnographic study of the performance of masculinities in youth cafés’

Year: 2015
Name: Diarmaid Kavanagh
Intitution: NUI (UCC)
Degree: Doctorate Social Science
Thesis: Constructing and Governing Homelessness in Dublin 1970 -2010
Year: 2015

Year: 2013
Name: Katharina Swirak
Intitution:
Degree: PHD
Thesis: A Post-Structuralist Analysis of Irish Youth Crime Prevention Policy with Specific Emphasis on the Garda Youth Diversion Projects

Year: 2012
Name: Hazel Scully
Intitution: University College Cork
Degree: M.Phil.
Thesis: “Bad Relationships”: Irish Young People’s Views, Experiences and Understandings of (Romantic) Relationship Abuse