I am a Research Fellow at the School of Public Health, University College Cork, Ireland. My research interests centre on the dynamics, influences, and pathways through which Health in All Policies' approaches can become embedded across policy development. In particular, my research seeks to uncover the nuances and complexities across the relationships between policy, evidence and practice in public health. Health Impact Assessment (HIA), as one process and set of tools used to embed Health in All Policies, has long been an area of research of mine. I am currently the Principal Investigator on an Emerging Investigator for Health award, funded by the Health Research Board (HRB) Ireland, with the project Development of a Health Impact Assessment Implementation Model: Enhancing Intersectoral Approaches in Tackling Health Inequalities (HIA-IM) (2023-2027). The project is based in UCC, co-hosted between the School of Public Health and ISS21. I also lead a knowledge translation project (2024-2026), TRANSLATE-HIA, which will boost the sharing of learnings from the HIA-IM project. The project is also funded by the HRB. I encourage and welcome doctoral and postgraduate research projects for supervision on topics related to approaches and tools that seek to strengthen Health in All Policies; proposed studies examining the role of cultural, structural, normative and ideological influences in addressing (or not) health inequities and inequalities in Irish policy and programme development; studies examining and informing the development of feminist urbanist approaches to creating liveable cities.

I have an interdisciplinary academic background in political science, social science, public health and health promotion. The consolidation of my educational background with my academic endeavours has refined my core research interest- a curiosity of political and social institutional and policy drivers in a variety of contexts. Throughout my research studies, these drivers have been conceptualised and theorised as influencers of policy, organisational and cultural structures; in advancing contextualised public health action; and in shaping lived experiences.

My teaching experience and interests centre broadly on the interdisciplinary field of health promotion, particularly Health in All Policies and Health Impact Assessment (HIA). My interests span also inequality studies, in particular, health and gender inequalities with institutionalist and feminist institutionalist theories and approaches; Irish and European policies and their development, Irish politics (local and national); comparative health care systems; qualitative research methods. In University College Cork, I coordinate two modules delivered within the BSc Public Health Sciences degree programme, which are also open to students from other degree programmes. 'Introduction to Theories and Practices of Health Promotion' (5 credits) (EH2008) is a core module delivered to second year students. I have designed a new module to be delivered to third year students of the BSc Public Health Sciences degree programme for the first time from January 2025, entitled 'Health Impact Assessment' (EH3005). This is the first module of its kind focused on enhancing skills and knowledge in HIA in Ireland, in a higher education institution. I supervise students on the Masters in Public Health programme in the School of Public Health, UCC, and students on the Masters in Healthcare Management, Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland (RCSI).