Emma is a lecturer and researcher at the Centre for Gerontology and Rehabilitation in the School of Medicine at University College Cork (UCC). She obtained her PhD in 2019 from Dublin City University, under a full SPHeRE scholarship. Her areas of expertise in terms of research and teaching include Dementia, Parkinson’s disease and other related disorders, in older people. Her research has comprised mixed-methods evaluations of health services and support services, national surveys, a range of qualitative methodologies, and clinical trials.

Post-PhD, she was the project manager for the ‘Mapping Parkinson’s’ study in Ireland, an ambitious national project which provided necessary data for future planning and development of Parkinson’s disease health and social care services. Real impact has been created by this project, with the resulting data having been used to negotiate a doubling of the total number of Parkinson’s disease nurse specialists in the Republic of Ireland. Since then, she has led several projects as PI, including evaluations of the Alzheimer Society of Ireland's 'Day Care at Home' and 'TeamUp for Dementia Research' services. She is currently a co-investigator on the PD-Life project (E4 million), and supervises several PhD students.

Some of her other roles include former Secretary and current member of the Parkinson’s Disease Research Cluster, Ireland’s only collaborative multidisciplinary network of researchers, based in UCC. Since 2023, she is the Director of a postgraduate programme in UCC, ‘Older Person Rehabilitation’. She is also the current Chair of the Research and Impact Subcommittee of Parkinson’s Ireland and a member of UCC’s Academic Council. She is a member of UCC's Social Research Ethics Committee and the School of Medicine representative on the Community and Civic Engagement Committe.