Joanne has been lecturing in environmental law at UCD's School of Law degree programmes to undergraduate students and to Masters' students since 2003, on all aspects of domestic, European and international environmental law. Joanne also lectures in tort law to both undergraduates and postgraduates. She also lectures on Irish law and procedure on the Diploma in Arbitration. She has previously lectured in European Law.  She is the LLM Director at UCD currently and has previously acted as Examinations Officer.

Joanne has presented research papers at numerous law conferences and most recently presented a paper in March 2011 in Canada at Windsor University on Access to Justice.  Other conferences at which she has presented papers include Beijing, China at the International Forum on Environmental Law and Sustainable Development the Environment & regularly at the Environment and the Law conference at UCC. Joanne is currently completing her Doctoral Studies on Access to Justice for Mass Harm at UCC under the supervision of Dr. Owen McIntyre.  She has a strong interest in environmental issues and recently chaired a forum on climate change at the Irish Society for European Law with Commissioner Stavros Dimas, of the European Commission. She has lectured on international environmental law at New York's Fordham University Summer School 2006 in collaboration with UCD and Queen's University Belfast. She has been a visiting lecturer at De Paul University, Chicago.  She is a member of the review panel for the research project on Access to Information, Participation and Justice in Environmental Decision- Making, Centre for Sustainability at Sligo Institute of Technology.  She is the Environmental Law Editor for the Martindale Hubbell Legal Digest.

While Joanne's current research is focused on her Doctoral research which examines class actions and multi-party actions as a route to justice for mass harm, particularly environmental harm.  Joanne's research interests extend from environmental law, European law, tort law, competition law and commercial law, dispute resolution, arbitration and mediation to international law and comparative law. She is a supervisor of dissertations of a number of Masters and undergraduate students at UCD and students of the Law Society of Ireland.

Joanne graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1998, with an honours degree in law, a year of which was spent at Assas, Paris II, La Sorbonne, specialising in European competition and international law. She holds a Master's degree in European Law from UCD. Joanne trained as a solicitor and worked with Arthur Cox- specialising in commercial law, corporate finance, commercial litigation and insolvency. She was admitted to the Roll of Solicitors in May 2002. Joanne is also an arbitrator and a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and holds a Diploma in Arbitration and a Diploma in International Arbitration. She is also an accredited mediator and holds a Diploma in Commercial and Civil Mediation from Friary Law and ADR Groups' mediation training.  She is an active member of the Irish Environmental Law Association and also the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. She is proficient in legal French and German.