Mary Cronin is a Social Scientist and College Lecturer in the School of Public Health (SPH), UCC since 2006 where she's the lead academic for teaching in the discipline of Health Promotion. She's Co-Chair of the College of Medicine and Health's Civic and Community Engagement committee and is committed to supporting community-engaged research among colleagues and students.

She was appointed to the board of the Cork/Kerry Traveller Health Unit in 2024. Mary is Principal Investigator on a Community Based Participatory Research project involving a partnership between the Traveller Visibility Group, Cork, Prof. Fergus Shanahan and Marc McCarthy of APC Microbiome Ireland at UCC and the SPH, on potential health-protective impacts of Traveller's unique, non-industrialised microbiome. She was awarded a UNIC4ER grant to work with a team of 14 Travellers peer researchers on this project across Cork city and county in 2024/25, and is completing her PhD on this CBPR.

From 2022-25 Mary co-led the qualitative strand of the ULTRA project which is piloting digital maternal health records in northern Tanzania; this involved a partnership between the INFANT Centre and the School of Public Health at UCC with the Kilimanjaro Clinical Research Institute, Tanzania.

Mary brings a transdisciplinary perspective to her research and teaching in Health Promotion based on her academic and professional qualifications and 15 years of professional experience. She was awarded an MA in Social Policy from UCC, a Diploma in Community and Youth Work from NUI Maynooth and has two nursing qualifications - Registered Sick Children's Nurse from Guy's Hospital, London and a Registered General Nurse from the Cork Regional Hospital. Mary lectured in the Department of Health Promotion, NUI Galway from 2002-2004 and was an Outreach Co-ordinator, Placement Co-ordinator and lecturer in the School of Applied Social Studies UCC from 1998-2002. 

Mary's research is focused on examining health determinants, particularly structural determinants, to better contribute to social transformation and the amelioration of inequities in Ireland. Her work focuses on the Traveller community, as well as other minority communities. She has a strong interest in participatory and engaged research and its potential to address epistemic injustices experienced by those on the margins of society and to influence public discourse, policy making and health services.

Research Subject Areas:

Community Based Participatory Research - Mary is completing her PhD in this area.

Structural Determinants of Health Inequities of those on the margins of Irish society especially the Traveller communityWomen's Health - informed by an Intersectionality perspective

Methodologies / Methods: Critical Social ResearchParticipatory and Engaged Research; Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR)

Qualitative data analysis - discourse analysis, policy analysis, thematic analysis.

Mary is the Principal Investigator on a CBPR project which involves a partnership between the Traveller Visibility Group, Cork, Professor Fergus Shanahan and Marc McCarthy of APC Microbiome Ireland at UCC, and the School of Public Health and is undertaking Traveller microbiome-related research on the prevalence of Inflammatory Bowel Disease in the community and Travellers' social determinants of health. She was awarded a grant through UCC's UNIC4ER scheme to train Travellers as peer researchers on this project which has gathered data in Cork city and county. 

I am the discipline lead for Health Promotion in the SPH. My teaching focuses on Health Promotion's core concepts and principles, along with a critical analysis of preceding public health discourse, theories and practices. I place particular focus on the Social Determinants of Health and the root causes of Health Inequities and the actions needed to reduce them. I teach on Public Policy, Health Discourse and Community Development as means to ameliorate Health Inequities, as well as Qualitative Critical Social Research and Participatory, Community and Civic Engagement in Research. I also teach on the topics of Ethnicity, Culture and Health and Anti-Racist Practice.