About Us
The School of Social Justice comprises both disciplines of Equality Studies and Women’s Studies. Our aim is to promote social justice both locally and globally, using interdisciplinary, feminist and egalitarian approaches to learning. We offer undergraduate modules through the UCD horizons programme, postgraduate programmes in Equality Studies and Women’s Studies, and also outreach and continuing professional development programmes in both disciplines. We also host UCD’s Egalitarian World Initiative, a network of over 100 scholars from across the university who are working on social justice issues. Our programmes are flexible. To facilitate part-time students, many classes are offered in the evening. There are progression routes from one qualification to the next. Our graduates can be found working in every sector and include government ministers, community activists, home carers, educators, artists, health care professionals, farmers, police, civil servants and journalists.
Our History
The School of Social Justice was formed in 2005, to institutionalize a gap in the academic space for this type of work and to bring together the Equality Studies Centre and the Women’s Studies Centre under the umbrella of Social Justice. The setting up of the school and the formation of Equality Studies and Women’s Studies was strongly influenced by the fact that, while many faculties and fields of scholarship address issues of inequality, gender and social justice, and there are some subjects that address specific group-related inequalities, including disability studies, there are very few schools or centres that focus all their research and teaching on women’s issues and equality issues in a holistic way
Equality Studies
Equality Studies is an inherently inter-disciplinary study of significant equalities and inequalities in human life, both as it has been and as it might be. It addresses topics including patterns of inequality, explanations of inequality, principles of equality and equality objectives, egalitarian social, political and economic institutions and strategies for change. Work in Equality Studies is currently concentrated in four main areas: development and global north/south relations, minorities and discrimination, gender, and class structures.
Women Studies
Women's Studies is one of the most vibrant international fields of study, producing its own body of scholarship, at the same time challenging and altering traditional disciplines and having a profound effect on the wider world. One of feminism’s success stories over the past four decades has been the establishment of Women’s Studies programmes throughout every continent, and this expansion is continuing. As a discipline, Women’s Studies addresses issues previously neglected by traditional disciplines, and adapt and refines theories and methods from those disciplines
Welcome
MEEt the students
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