Associate Professor
Orla is an Associate Professor in the School of Economics and a Research Fellow at the UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy. She has established an innovative research programme on the economics of human development and she currently leads the UCD Childhood and Human Development Research Centre.
Orla is currently the president of the Irish Economic Association, the first UCD academic to hold this position since 1990. Orla is firmly committed to supporting women in economics. In 2022, she established the Irish Society for Women in Economics (ISWE) which provides a platform for encouraging more women to study and pursue careers in economics and to increase the visibility of women economists in Ireland. In addition, she co-chaired the Athena SWAN process in the School of Economics, becoming the first economics department in Ireland to receive the Bronze award. Read more about Athena SWAN at UCD.
My advice for surviving and thriving in academia, and in life in general, is to follow your instincts. You know you, and you are best placed to ensure that everything you do is aligned with your values. Lean in to projects which bring you joy and out of those which do not. This may mean saying ‘no’ more than ‘yes’, but that’s ok, you only have one life, so don’t spend it doing what other people want or expect from you.
Orla's research focuses on the importance of early life conditions in shaping later life outcomes and the use of experimental designs to identify the effectiveness of interventions to ameliorate poverty. Her most significant research contribution is the development of 'Preparing for Life' (PFL) which is the longest running experimental intervention programme in Europe. The trial, which has resulted in over 25 academic articles to date, studies the impact of providing intensive parenting support via a home visiting programme from pregnancy until age five. Together with colleagues, they have documented the impact of the programme on birth outcomes (Doyle et al 2014), health (Doyle et al 2015), behaviour (Doyle et al 2016) and cognitive skills (Doyle 2020), as well as long-term impacts on school test scores (Doyle 2022). This work demonstrates the importance of investing early in life to break the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage.