Linda Horgan

Linda Horgan graduated with a diploma in occupational therapy from St. Joseph's College of Occupational Therapy in 1988. She began her career working in long stay mental health institutions with special responsibility for reintegrating long stay residents into community living. She progressed to establishing a service for clients who had intellectual disabilities along with mental health difficulties. During this time, she studied Behaviour Therapy in UCC to support her work with this challenging group of individuals, earning both a post graduate Certificate in Behaviour Therapy and a post graduate Diploma in Professional Studies from the Department of Applied Psychology. After a stint travelling and working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and Australia, Linda continued to broaden her clinical experience by establishing a service and working with clients with physical disabilities in the greater Cork area. During this time she was involved in establishing community home, a toy library and integrating Occupational Therapy into the school programme. In 1995 she was recruited to establish the first community based occupational therapy service in the former Southern Health Board area of Cork City and South Cork for a population of 350,000. During this time work was initiated on the establishment of a Developmental Co-ordination Disorder unit for children with Dyspraxia, a seating clinic, provision of Occupational Therapy to Day Care Centres for the Elderly and Community Hospitals. She was involved in the design and upgrading of Community Hospitals and Day Care Centres. She managed this service until 2001. During this time Linda completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Occupational Therapy in a Community Setting and a Masters Degree in Occupational Therapy in Trinity College Dublin on the design of Health Care buildings. Since 2001, she has run a private practice in the occupational health, building design for people with disabilities, life tim

While not working presently on research, my research interest focuses mainly on universal design and in particular design of public spaces. This is expressed mainly via co-education on collaborative research projects between professional groups such as architects and engineers with occupational therapists in general, with particular focus on research projects of professional undergraduate architectural and engineering students. Developing this research capacity in these professional bodies, aims to embed the universal approach in the process of designing for the needs of diverse populations. (See Section7)I also have an interest in functional perfromance of driving and driving rehabilitation.

Linda is currently responsible for implementing a first year module (OT 1002) and contributes to the following modules in the department. OT 1001OT 3001OT 4001 She also supervises year 4 undergraduate research projects. Outside the department, Linda organises workshops on raising awareness around disability issues for students who study architecture and interior architecture.