Biography:

I attended University of California from 1979-1985, where I specialized in personality development in adulthood.  I took a position in UCD in 1989, and became involved in women's studies as well as in psychology.  The red thread running through my interests is the question of how people can grow and flourish across the lifespan.  I believe the social context plays a vital role in development, and have pursued questions about Irish society as a context for deveopment, the impact of legacies of colonialism, pornography and sexual violence,  lesbian and gay experience, and transpersonal psychology.  My first book combines feminist theory and postcolonial psychology to explore the impact of oppression, and it led me into liberation psychology, which aims to transform oppression and can be applied in a number of different areas.