Rory Hearne

I am currently a Lecturer in Social Policy in the Department of Applied Social Studies in Maynooth. I have researched and published in academic and policy fields of housing and social housing, spatial disadvantage, housing rights, economic inequality, neoliberalism and the welfare state, social justice, and social movements. I have a PhD in political and economic geography from Trinity College Dublin in 2009. 
In 2011 I published an academic peer reviewed book, ‘Public Private Partnerships in Ireland; Failed experiment or the way forward?’ (Manchester University Press in 2011). 
I have also published in high quality international peer reviewed journals. For example, drawing from praxis-based research on ‘the right to the city’ and human rights based approaches (undertaken as a community worker in Dolphin House, Dublin from 2007 to 2013) I have published in the international Journal of Human Rights Practice, Human Geography, and the Irish Journal of Community Work.  While I have published on my innovative research into new social movements and civil society in Ireland in Interface, and in Geoforum
While lecturing in the Department of Geography, Maynooth University from 2012 to 2015, I taught a number of undergraduate and postgraduate modules including the third year module, ‘Geographies of the Crisis’, modules on social science research methods, developed a new second year module ‘Human Rights and Spatial Justice’, and two new modules for the new MA in Human Geography in 2015, ‘Globalisation and Social Movements’, and ‘Public Engagement’. 
Over 2015-2017, I was a Senior Policy Analyst with the inequality research think tank, TASC where I researched the political economy of economic inequality and the welfare state, with a particular focus on housing, financialisation, social policy and inequality. I was lead author of Cherishing All Equally 2016: Economic Inequality in Ireland and ‘Home or wealth generator? Inequality, financialisation and the Irish Housing crisis’ (TASC, 2017). 
I worked between 2017 and 2018 on the H2020 funded Re-InVEST (Rebuilding an Inclusive, Value-based Europe of Solidarity and Trust through Social Investments) project. It involved research (qualitative and quantitative) into EU and national state social policy (in the water, housing, finance, childcare and early childhood education, labour market, and health sectors) across 13 EU countries. I co-developed, with the Irish Principal Investigator on Re-InVEST, Dr Mary Murphy, the Re-InVEST project’s methodological approach, the Participatory Action Human Rights and Capabilities Approach (PAHRCA), and the PAHRCA Toolkit. 
I continue to research and publish in the area of housing policy, housing rights, inequality and social movements.
I am also a public intellectual and regularly contribute to discussion of contemporary social, economic and political issues on national media such as RTE's Late Debate, RTE Brainstorm, the Irish Times, Newstalk Radio and contribute to public events dealing with these issues.