Celebrating a Decade of Fitzpatrick Family Foundation Research
L to R: Oonagh Breen, Director of Research, Sile and Seamus Fitzpatrick, Laurent Pech, Dean and Head of School and Jordan Campell, CEO UCD Foundation
On Wednesday 18 June 2025, UCD Sutherland School of Law, along with UCD Foundation invited Sile and Seamus Fitzpatrick to celebrate a decade of their support for the School’s empirical research in the fields of Socio-Legal, Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Criminal law. Sile, as Director of the Fitzpatrick Family Foundation and her husband met with former awardees and got to hear from them and see some of their outputs.
The Fitzpatrick Family Foundation originally funded a PhD scholarship in 2011, and Dr Aoife Watters was its first recipient. The title of her thesis Control and Gender: An Analysis of the Irish Prison Disciplinary System. Upon completion, the thesis was shared with interested parties including the Irish Prison Service, the Office of the Inspector of Prisons, the Irish Penal Reform Trust and criminology scholars.
Over time, the endowment evolved to fund research in socio-legal, criminology, criminal justice and criminal law. Dr Síle McGuckian Fitzpatrick is a Director of the Fitzpatrick Family Foundation. As a funding model, it has proven to be incredibly successful. The cyclical and sustained nature of the support has ensured continuity of research work (as exemplified in two 2-part research projects) and a proliferation of research outputs.
Other projects featured in the Showcase included Judge-Jury Relations in Ireland. A team of researchers published a ground-breaking report assessing the interactions between judges and jurors in Ireland. This two-stage study is the realisation of a project which began in 2017 by Dr Mark Coen and Dr Niamh Howlin, along with their research assistants, Dr Colette Barry and Mr John Lynch.
Professor Ian O’Donnell also secured two streams of funding and supported his project Life after Life a piece of empirical research based on an Ethiopian prison. And by way of follow up of this study secured funding for Qualitative Study of Short-Term Imprisonment in Ireland. Ian’s last study produced a paper in the second edition of the 2024 volume of the Irish Judicial Studies Journal. There is also an essay in a literary magazine (The Dublin Review) which appeared in the autumn 2024 issue.
Award recipients with the Fitzpatrick donors: L to R - Dr Mark Coen, Dr Collette Barry, Dr Aoife Watters, Dr Niamh Howlin, Sile and Seamus Fitzpatrick, Professor Ian O’Donnell and Oonagh Breen, Director of Research.