The UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy is a centre of excellence for policy-relevant, theoretically- informed, empirically-grounded research.
The Institute supports research in empirical social and behavioural sciences within organised themes and research centres, and brings together researchers to stimulate discussion on theories, methodologies and empirical results. The main disciplines at Geary include: Demography, Economics, Education, Law, Political Science, Psychology, Public Health and Sociology. The Institute complements and extends the core research expertise of UCD Schools and Institutes interwoven with international and national partnerships.
Founded in 1999, the Geary Institute received funding from the Higher Education Authority and private donors under cycles 1 and 3 of the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions. The total funding committed was €6.5 million. A large part of the allocated funding in Cycle 1 was used to construct and equip a new Institute building, which became operational in January 2002. In 2005, the Institute was renamed in honour of Roy Geary (1896–1983), a UCD graduate and social scientist whose seminal research in the area of statistics, economics, demography and national accounting remains to this day, central to study in these fields. The institute adopted its current name in 2014 in order to reflect the core focus on evidence for public policy.
Within a few years of establishment the Institute attained a strong reputation in Ireland and Europe and has an established international reputation as a centre of excellence in microeconomics, quantitative social sciences and behavioural social science, leveraging the concept of Ireland as a unique laboratory for evidence-based policy formation. The Institute is an integral part of UCD’s strategy to develop inter- disciplinary research institutes that are places of ‘research excellence’, that have a critical mass of world- class researchers in prioritised research areas.