Over the previous decade I have worked inside of the third-sector in the Republic of Ireland, and most recently in Canada, working with marginalized and "at-risk" individuals and groups. Previously, I worked in the third-sector as a research and development coordinator (immigrant advocacy), and more recently through front-line practice, working directly with young people experiencing homelessness, and its many complex intersections. 

I hold a joint bachelors degree (BA) in Sociology and French from Trinity College Dublin, and a master of science (MSc) degree in Sociology from the University of Amsterdam. 

My research interests surround the relationship between the third sector and the state. In particular I am interested in understanding, through comparative analysis, how nonprofit social service organisations continue to evolve under neoliberal governmentality at the same time that the state increasingly withdraws from the public body. A central concern of my research is understanding the effect of this process on vulnerable people and groups. Furthermore, I am highly interested to know more about the role of the third sector inside of a 'New Welfare State' - one which seeks to pursue a renewed stakeholder responsibility for the state in the affairs of the citizenry, and wider policies of social protection. In this light, I seek to understand how social inequalities are affected across different welfare-states, and to understand how market influences affect variations in social inequalities. I am also highly interesed to understand the extent to which civil society is becoming responsible for providing a function of care in areas that the state previously tended to. Can this shift be read then as some new form of radical democratic participation ("from below"), or just more sophiticated modalities of advanced liberal intervention? ("from above"). 

Two central aims of my research are: (1) to strengthen material / structural understandings of inequalities and (2) to awaken 'ideology' in the study of third-sector-state relations. 

Research Interests: critical sociology; neoliberalism; third-sector; welfare-state; comparative sociology; non-profit industrial complex; political economy, civil society

Social Inequalities (SOST0013) January 2022 - April 2022

The focus of this module is to understand the main positions and conflicts surrounding the conceptualization, explanation and legitimization of social inequality. Central are issues related to economics, culture and power, as well as their intersection with other axes of inequality, such as gender and ethnicity. The Western hemisphere forms the main frame of reference for this module, but issues of global inequality are touched upon too.