Professor Maria Brenner
Maria Brenner, originally from Cloghan, County Offaly, grew up in a small rural Irish community that shaped her values and dedication to healthcare. She began her nursing career with an integrated programme in both children’s and general nursing at CHI Crumlin (formerly Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital) and the Mater Hospital, Dublin, qualifying in 1994.
Driven to specialise further, she trained in intensive care nursing and pursued a strong academic path at University College Dublin, earning a BSc in 2000, an MSc in 2003, and a PhD in 2012. Inspired by outstanding mentors during her student years, Maria developed a deep passion for education, beginning her teaching career at CHI Crumlin in 2002 before joining UCD in 2006.
Her research began with co-leading the first randomised controlled trial in children’s nursing in Ireland and soon evolved to focus on the care of children with complex medical needs. UCD Seed Funding supported her pivotal study on transitioning children from hospital to home, which led to prestigious research fellowships at Boston Children’s Hospital and the University of Montreal.
In 2015, she was invited to lead a European Commission H2020 project - within the Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) project (EU Commission H2020 programme) examining care models for children with complex needs. Her team developed Europe’s first principles and standards of care for this group. Her work continues through global collaborations with the WHO, UNICEF, and research partners across Europe, the Middle East, and the U.S., helping shape policy and practice in children's healthcare worldwide.
Maria is a Professor of Children’s Nursing in the UCD School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems.
Current Research Challenges
Professor Brenner currently leads a research programme focused on clinical technology and complex care, predominantly through TechChild, a five-year project funded by the European Research Council. Her work addresses the ethical and practical implications of clinical technology dependence in children, asking the critical question ‘Just because we can, should we?’
See more below.
Within this project her team examines how we conceptualise influences on the initiation of clinical technology dependence and how these influences are understood in the context of contrasting health, legal and socio-political systems. This project gathers insights from clinicians, parents, and young people to understand the complexities of initiating clinical technology dependence, ultimately socialising an emerging theory from her work to inform care planning, parent advocacy, and healthcare policy.
Professor Brenner collaborates widely, an example being the Gravitate Health project, a €18.5 million joint undertaking of the European Commission, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) and IMI2 Associated Partners, aiming to provide technology (a G-lens) for personalised content delivery to patients. Her initial work on this project has included leading the task on the development of KPIs to demonstrate the impact of the G-lens.
The Researcher
Professor Brenner was a founding member of the UCD Childhood and Human Development Research Centre and is the research theme lead for the Child, Young Person and Family Research theme in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems in UCD. Within this, she promotes interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaborations to respond to health challenges and establish research-based insights that positively impact the lives of children, young people, and their families. She is also a member of the UCD Faculty Promotions Committee, a commitment that is very important to her in terms of contributing to UCD enabling and supporting faculty potential and development.
Outside of UCD she has numerous engagements internationally advising on child health initiatives and advocating for care for vulnerable children (e.g. UNICEF, Golisano Institute for Developmental Disability Nursing).
More locally she is a member of the CHI led multidisciplinary Academic Child Health Steering Committee that provides strategic guidance and supports projects, partnerships and activities that advance child and adolescent health in Ireland, specifically working with colleagues on the concept of the vulnerable child in health care.
Maria enjoys swimming, walking, spending time with family, and travelling.
Future Research Aspirations
Maria’s research directly speaks to UCD’s strategic aims of transforming learning, advancing research and innovation, and engaging for impact, and in doing so informs learning through research-informed teaching, providing a strong evidence-base for health care students. Her future research aspirations are centred on further advancing interdisciplinary collaborations with researchers, children and their families in the pursuit of strengthening the inclusion and empowerment of vulnerable children and their families in their healthcare, while supporting the development of the next generation of researchers.
As the TechChild project concludes, she is pursuing further grant applications with international collaborators to develop novel cross-jurisdictional scalable and impactful research. In doing so she is focused on continuing to support a positive and inclusive research culture.
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