I am an Associate Professor in Development Practice at the School of Natural Sciences (Discipline of Geography), Trinity College Dublin, and the Principal Investigator of GEOFORMATIONS, a European Research Council (ERC) funded project examining the geographies of dynamic governance assemblages in development cooperation civil society spaces (2023-2028).
My research interests are in international development governance, ethics, policy, and practice. I study ethical governance in times of change. Although there are competing and contested understandings, theories, and world views of development, all forms of development entail change. Some forms of change are designed, planned, controlled, monitored, evaluated, and adapted. Other forms of change are unplanned, the result of unintended consequences and outcomes, and sometimes unwanted.
The study of ethical governance concerns the examination of how development is designed, planned, implemented, monitored, evaluated, and overseen. It is concerned with how responsibility and accountability for outputs, outcomes, and impacts are attributed and allocated, to whom, and for what reasons. It requires consideration of who and what is included in these activities, as well as who and what is excluded. Whose voices are heard and not heard in decision-making processes, and why? It explores power dynamics in governing development practice and how power is or should be balanced across the range of agents, agencies, and communities affected by development activities.
From 2018 to 2023, I was co-principal Investigator for the GATE project – Gender Awareness and Transformation in Education – which was an international institutional collaboration to promote gender equality in Higher Education between Trinity College Dublin and Dar es Salaam University College of Education. This project was funded by the Embassy of Ireland to Tanzania, the Development Cooperation Unit, and Irish Aid. In 2023, my project, GEOFORMATIONS: the geographies of dynamic governance assemblages in development cooperation civil society spaces, was selected for funding by the European Research Council (ERC) under the ERC-2022-STG competition.
GEOFORMATIONS is designed to provide radical new insights into the governance geographies of place-based development cooperation practices that can be used to transform international development cooperation governance theory, policy, and practice. As a collaborative, engaged researcher, I run interdisciplinary projects related to development with PhD scholars (x10) and researchers in education, economics, clinical speech and language studies, and business. Committed to transdisciplinary research, I also co-design and co-deliver research projects with a number of key development agencies and organisations. In 2021, I established the Climate Justice and Development Research Group.
My team of funded PhD (x3) and MRes (x1) scholars examine the multivariant relations between climate action planning, climate change, sociocultural relationships, and situated power dynamics through a restorative development lens. I lecture on Gender and Development, Climate Justice, and Development Research and Practice. As part of my work, I hold several external roles including membership of Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs Audit Committee; University College Cork External Examiner for BSc in International Development; Chair of the Board of Trustees, Oxfam Ireland; Member of the Board of Supervisors, Oxfam International; British International Studies Association (BISA) Ethics and World Politics Working Group Co-conveyor; Scientific Committee Member, UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network International Conference in Sustainable Development.