The Department's staff are often asked to participate in public debates and events.
While there are a variety of ways to do this, below you will find links to blogs, articles and media appearances by staff.
The Department's staff are often asked to participate in public debates and events.
While there are a variety of ways to do this, below you will find links to blogs, articles and media appearances by staff.
"Shifts in attitudes and improvements in fertility treatment have driven many of the changes. Technology has opened up the possibility of parenthood to more people, says Gray. “Our families have changed accordingly and become much more flexible as a result."
Jane Gray is a Sociology Professor at NUI Maynooth (NUIM) and co-author of Family Rhythms: The Changing Textures of Family Life in Ireland, a book that charts the evolution of Irish families from the early 20th century to the current day, which is featured in this Irish Examiner Piece on the changing paths to parenthood in Ireland, published 3 May 2022.
Research from Dr Pauline Cullen and Shane Gough of Maynooth Sociology Department highlights abuse women from ethnic minorities reveal experienced on election trail via at Irish Examiner, published 31 March 2022.
"As Ukraine endures the agony of a brutal assault by Russian forces, the world is beginning to confront the cost of misreading Vladimir Putin ‑ his character, his intentions, his obsessions, his risk calculus and his worldview."
Professor John O'Brennan of Maynooth University Sociology Department writes about Vladimir Putin in 'This is who he is" for Dublin Review of Books: This Is Who He Is - DRB, March 2022.
Maynooth Sociology PhD Student, Oleg Chupryna, recently published a number of articles on the current crisis in Ukraine and the legacy of Revolutions in Ukraine:
Oleg is currently undertaking a PhD study in the Sociology Department at Maynooth University, supervised by Professor John O'Brennan and Dr Barry Cannon. Oleg is also a member of Maynooth University Centre for European and Euraisan Studies.
Dr Pauline Cullen joined Newtalk's On The Record podcast with Gavan Reilly to discuss gender-based violence and what can be done to stamp it out in Ireland.
Listen to the full podcast here, recorded 16 January 2022.
STOPFARRIGHT is an Irish Research Council funded project, led by Dr Barry Cannon of the Department of Sociology at Maynooth University in association with Crosscare. The project aims to promote discussion and debate between academics and civil society groups on how best to counter-strategise against the growth of the far right in Ireland. As part of its activities, STOPFARRIGHT held a series of online seminars with leading Irish and International academics and civil society members working on the theme of resisting the Far Right:
Mary P. Corcoran joined Ian Robertson, psychologist & Kenneth Pearce, philosopher to discuss the question “Even if a higher power didn't exist, would humans create one?” on RTE Radio 1’s The Leap of Faith, on Friday, 10 December. Listen back here.
John O’ Brennan appeared on Euronews on 8 December 2021, to discuss the proposed EU ‘sanctions hammer’ and whether it is likely to be adopted in EU legislation in the near future. His comments can be found in this piece: https://www.euronews.com/2021/12/08/brussels-is-vowing-to-fight-back-against-economic-coercion-but-how-far-will-it-go
Dr Rebecca Chiyoko King-O'Riain discussed the Netflix hit, Squid Game, with the Hong Kong Economic Journal Monthly.
Read the interview here https://monthly.hkej.com/monthly/article?id=2987388, published December 2021.
Professor John O Brennan hosted a talk by the world renowned intellectual, Ivan Krastev (Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna and Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia) for the Irish Institute for International and European Affairs, on Wednesday 24 November. The theme of the talk was how COVID has impacted on the European Union and how the pandemic might further change Europe. The talk was based on the recent book on that theme published by Mr Krastev with Allen Lane publishers.
You can watch back the webinar here:
Care Provision: A Feminist Economist's Perspective took place via Teams on 15 November 2021. This online seminar was hosted by The CareVisions research project, Institute for Social Science in the 21st Century at University College Cork.
Abstract: Care provision builds on personal commitments and social obligations, but as a result, is often taken for granted. How can we make a case for more generous public support and more equitable sharing of care responsibilities? A feminist economic perspective provides a helpful vocabulary for answering this question.
Discussant: Professor Mary Murphy, Department of Sociology, Maynooth University
Speaker: Professor Nancy Folbre, Director of the Program on Gender and Care Work at the Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Professor John O' Brennan was interviewed on the Sean Moncrieff Show on Newstalk FM about the Northern Ireland Protocol and Brexit on Thursday 14 October.
Listen back to the full discussion here.
Professor Mary Corcoran chaired a Government panel discussion hosted by Kildare County Council with support from the Department of Local Government, Environment and Heritage on Wednesday, 13 October 2021. The event was directed in particular at Transition Year students around Kildare to encourage them to consider careers in politics and public service.
The event featured six high profile panellists: Cllr. Naoise O’Cearuil, Cllr. Chris Pender and Cllr. Angela Feeney all of Kildare County Council alongside, Celina Barrett, Chief Fire Officer, Kildare CoCo, Sonya Kavanagh, Interim Chief Executive, Kildare CoCo and Alison Crowzer, entrepreneur, investor and chair of Women for Election.
Interestingly, three councillors on the panel are all Maynooth University graduates: Cllr. Naoise O’Cearuil studied Politics; Cllr. Chris Pender studied Community Work; and Cllr. Angela Feeney holds a doctorate in Education.
Watch the full event back (https://vimeo.com/601060039#) and see pictures below:
Professor John O’Brennan was interviewed on 13 October 2021 by TRT World television on Brexit, EU-UK relations and the Northern Ireland Protocol. You can view the segment via this YouTube link:
The hit Netflix series, Squid Game, is the latest in a growing global engagement with Korean popular and commercial culture.
Read the full article here by Dr Rebecca King O'Riain published via RTE Brainstorm on 11 October 2021, on why the show is so popular.
"Teachers were more generous to girls than boys in this year’s Leaving Cert – but some academics say the evidence doesn’t hold up"
Dr Delma Byrne shares comments on the topic in this Irish Times article boys will be boys: are schools guilty of unconscious gender bias? published on 5 October 2021
Professor John O' Brennan took part in a in-studio discussion on Newstalk FM's 'On the Record: Sunday Paper Review 19 September'. The discussion focused on the German federal elections and on the legacy of Angela Merkel for both Germany and the European Union.
Listen back to the full podcast here: https://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/on-the-record-with-gavan-reilly/on-the-record-sunday-paper-review-september-19th-2
In this Royal Irish Academy ARINS (Analysis and Research: Ireland North and South) blogpost, Professor Mary Murphy discusses a new welfare imaginary for the island of Ireland and how our society can collaborate to imagine a better welfare state across issues of social security, poverty and inequality, north and south.
Read the full blogpost here, published on 13 September 2021.
In light of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, ‘food apartheid’ has come under the spotlight. Food justice movements are expanding, and re-politicizing hunger in poor communities across US cities and beyond. Embedded structural and racialized inequalities are being exposed and challenged. Professor Mary P. Corcoran illuminates the extent of community-based activism around food justice in New Haven, CT in her research paper Beyond ‘food apartheid’: Civil society and the politicization of hunger in New Haven, Connecticut, published 9 June 2021.
Watch and listen to Professor Corcoran explain the key points of her paper in this video published on ScienceSocieties, YouTube:
Professors Seán Ó Riain and Mary Murphy took part in a webinar with SIPTU on "Low Pay Republic: Combatting Low Pay in the Irish Labour Market". They discussed low pay and the suite of labour market and enterprise-level policies which are required to tackle Ireland’s low pay epidemic.
Articles published in the Irish Times and The Irish Examiner discuss the The National Women's Council (NWC) of Ireland's new Increasing Gender Balance on Boards: The Case for Legislative Gender Quotas in Ireland report, authored by Dr Pauline Cullen of the Sociology Department at Maynooth University. The NWC's report highlights that women remain significantly underrepresented in boardrooms of Irish companies, and in senior leadership roles. Furthermore, they are facing a very slow pace of change, as well as evidence of stagnation and regression. The NWC has called for mandatory gender quotas to apply to corporate boards.
Read the articles here:
The Irish Times published on Thursday, 24 June 2021
The Irish Examiner published on Thursday, 24 June 2021
Dr Rebecca King O'Riain (Department of Sociology, Maynooth University) writes in the Irish Independent Opinion section about the many challenges faced by our resilient students during the pandemic.
Read the full article here.
Published in the Irish Independent on Friday, 30 April 2021
Professor Mary P. Corcoran chaired the "Full and Plenty- Farming and the Future" panel discussion with Professor Stephen Kinsella (University of Limerick) and Dr. Monica Gorman (University College Dublin). The webinar was hosted by Limerick Gallery of Art on 13 April 2021.
View the full webinar here.
Dr Pauline Cullen and Professor Mary Murphy, both of the Sociology Department at Maynooth University, write about the Irish feminists need to mobilise for a post-pandemic future built on an ethic of public care in the Irish Politics Forum.
This blog was orignally published in March 2021.
In this blog, Professor Mary Murphy (Sociology Department, Maynooth University) and Dr John Hogan (College of Business, Technical University Dublin), editors of Policy Analysis in Ireland, consider how Ireland’s response to the pandemic is impacted by austerity era reductions.
The blog was originally published in March 2021 in the Irish Politics Forum and the Transforming Society Blog.
Professor Mary Corcoran writes why the lockdown's bad hair days are no laughing matter for RTE Brainstorm.
Read the full article here, published in March 2021.
Watch the video by Laura Gaynor based on this blog featuring Professor Mary Corcoran: https://twitter.com/RTEBrainstorm/status/1379407566963367937
Professor Mary P Murphy of the Sociology Department at Maynooth University, recently published a new blog titled, 'Build Forward Public: The Case For A Post Pandemic Housing Imaginary', on PublicPolicy.ie:
"A huge fault line exposed during the pandemic is Ireland’s globalised political economy model in which the country opened up to the market large parts of society, including housing, health, and pensions. For example, 80% of nursing home accommodation and 70% of childcare places are provided through the market (Murphy, 2020). Conversely, Irish pandemic responses are severely limited by poor capacity in public services in housing, health, nursing homes, creches, education and special needs. The pandemic offers an opportunity to revalue the concept of ‘public’."
Read the full blog here which was published on Wednesday, 24 March 2021 in PublicPolicy.ie, UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy
In the Irish Times, Dr Pauline Cullen discusses how gender-based violence was ‘propelled’ onto the agenda by a large number of submissions to the Citizens Assembly ahead of its discussion of gender equality.
Read the full article here which was published on 13 March 2021.
"There are lots of moving parts with this disease which makes it difficult to capture through compiling raw numbers or generating statistical scenarios. To date, there have been multiple revisions made of statistical projections on Covid's trajectory. While there is lots of information out there, it may not translate straightforwardly into knowledge.
We can be forgiven if we have started to suffer from 'numerical fatigue'. Numbers tell us something, but they do not tell us everything."
Full article available here: https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2021/0303/1200578-covid-19-numerical-fatigue/
Article by Professor Mary Corcoran, Department of Sociology, Maynooth University. Published in RTE Brainstorm, Wednesday, 3 March 2021.
“The Irish Buddhist: the Forgotten Monk who Faced Down the British Empire”, a new book by Laurence Cox (Maynooth University, Sociology Department), Brian Bocking and Alicia Turner (Oxford University Press, 2020), tells the life of Dublin-born sailor, hobo, Buddhist monk and anti-colonial activist Laurence Carroll / U Dhammaloka. Dhammaloka had at least 5 pseudonyms, covered up 25 years of his life, was tried for sedition, put under police surveillance, faked his death and eventually disappeared.
Watch Laurence discuss this book in the video below, at an event for UCD’s Asia Pacific Research Network, held on 18 Februay 2021:
The authors of the book did multiple online events throughout the past year including at Princeton Fund for Irish Studies, Melbourne Irish Studies, Lausanne South Asian Studies, Mahidol University Religious Studies (Thailand), Shan State Buddhist University (Burma), EPIC the Irish Emigration Museum, UCC Study of Religions and Maynooth’s IFUT trade union.
Listen back to Professor Mary P. Corcoran as a guest panelist on RTE Radio 1 series “Like Family” - a special edition with Brenda Donohue, discussing the impact of COVID 19 on young people. Recorded September 9, 2020
Access podcast here: https://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/share/radio1/11231898
Professor Aphra Kerr and colleagues write a blog post for Media Literacy Ireland - ‘We Expect Ethical Artificial Intelligence – Who will deliver it?’.
Read the full article here: https://www.medialiteracyireland.ie/news/we-expect-ethical-artificial-intelligence-who-will-deliver-it, orginally published on 4 September 2020.
Professor Mary P. Corcoran chaired the "Engaging Dads, Supporting Families" webinar, organised by the Childhood Development Initiative on September 20, 2020.
View the full webinar here:
‘Why have over a million Irish people downloaded the Covid-19 app?' writes Professor Aphra Kerr for RTE Brainstorm.
See the full blog post here: https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0720/1154327-covid-tracker-app-ireland-technology-privacy-data/, originally published on 20 July 2020.
'Why making that call is better than texting or tweeting' in these times of cocooning & social distancing writes Professor Aphra Kerr for RTE Brainstorm.
Read the full blog post: https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0324/1125022-why-making-that-call-is-better-than-texting-or-tweeting/ orignally published on 24 March 2020.
Watch a video by Laura Gaynor, based on this blog here: https://twitter.com/RTEBrainstorm/status/1244934821912162304
The problem with existing systems of income support is not their conditionality but their presumption that only market participation is a legitimate contribution. Read more in this Reconfiguring welfare in an eco-social state: participation income and universal services blog published on Social Europe by Professor Mary Murphy and Dr Michael McGann, 29 May 2020.
"We need to avoid returning to a ‘normal’ that did not work for many people. Rather, we need to develop the most appropriate model of activation for this unique Covid-19 era, writes Dr Mary Murphy, Department of Sociology"
Read Ten Steps on a High Road Covid Era Back to Work Strategy by Professor Mary Murphy published on Maynooth University Spotlight on Research, May 2020.
Listen back to This is Where We Live - The Vienna Model: Housing for the 21st Century on Dublin City FM's Podcast with Professor Mary Murphy, Maynooth University Department of Sociology. July 2019.
Why do we always hear the argument that we need to be more like the Nordic Countries? Well probably because they match the direction of their economies to meet the needs of their societies. Professors Mary Murphy & Seán Ó Riain discuss the ways we can adopt those systems on to our market based economy on the Reboot Republic Podcast via Tortoise Shack. Originally published on 15 June 2018.