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Who are we?

The UCD Research Culture Initiative works in collaboration with UCD Research, Culture & Engagement, and all Colleges across the university. Daily activities are managed by a core team of professionals across diverse research backgrounds.

Get to know UCD Research Culture

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Grace Mulcahy

Chair, UCD Research Culture Initiative; UCD Research Integrity Officer

Grace Mulcahy is Full Professor of Veterinary Microbiology and Parasitology and spent almost 10 years (Jan 2007- Sept 2016) as Dean of Veterinary Medicine at University College Dublin and from Sept 2011-Sept 2016 as Head of the newly-formed UCD School of Veterinary Medicine. She leads an active research group focussing on helminth immunobiology, vaccines for veterinary parasites, and One Health. She is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. In 2019, Professor Mulcahy was appointed UCD's Research Integrity Officer (RIO). UCD's Research Culture initiative arose from the Research Integrity team's conviction of the power of a positive culture to enhance both research integrity and research excellence, reflecting UCD's strategic plan and strong commitment to research culture.

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Colleen Thomas

UCD Research Culture & Engagement Manager

Colleen Thomas holds a doctorate in the History of Art from Trinity College Dublin. Her research interests focus on the monumental sculpture of early medieval Ireland and Britain with particular emphasis on the visual representations of sanctified spaces and their relationships to cosmological time. Her research career has taken a curvy path beginning in industry as an art museum professional, then becoming an academic researcher, and at present, a research manager. Since 2021 she has been the project manager for the University College Dublin Research Culture Initiative, supporting one of four pillars of the UCD Research strategy and informing a national conversation on research culture in Ireland.

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Brigette Wafer

UCD Research Culture Trainer / SEED Funding Specialist

Originally from California, USA, Brigette recently moved to Ireland from Liverpool, UK. Prior to joining UCD, she worked as the Learning & Culture People Officer at the Royal College of Physicians. She holds an MRes in Social Research from the University of Liverpool and a BA in International Relations and Global Politics from the American University of Rome. Brigette has also conducted research for the United Nations, living in Cairo, Egypt as her work focused on ‘Gender and Conflict-induced Displacement in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region’.

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Ruth O'Kelly

UCD Research Culture Network Coordinator

Ruth O'Kelly brings 10 years of experience from the humanitarian aid sector. Originally from Lisburn, she completed her BSc in International Development and MSc in Community Water and Sanitation at Cranfield University. She has since worked for GOAL and for Concern Worldwide in Somalia and and Ethiopia before working with conflict-affected communities in South Sudan for 2 years. Returning to Ireland, she has since worked on the management of country programmes, including strategy, planning, funding applications, grant management, and hiring international staff. She looks forward to making positive changes with the Research Culture team at UCD and more broadly across the island in her Network Coordinator role.

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Taylor Ginieczki

UCD Research Culture Engagement Specialist

Taylor Ginieczki holds an MSc in International Politics from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and a BA in Political Science and Global Studies from the University of Oregon, USA. Moving from California to Dublin in 2022, she worked as a researcher for both Irish and American clients before earning her Master's at Trinity in 2023. Her academic background ranges from producing knowledge as a co-author with political science faculty, to publishing it as editor-in-chief of an Oregon research journal, to disseminating it as a executive organizer of an international conference with Columbia and Vanderbilt. These experiences across diverse research settings have uniquely shaped Taylor's values, and she brings an emphasis on integrity, openness, and inclusion to her role as Engagement Specialist with UCD Research Culture.

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Hugh Fulham-McQuillan

Research Fellow, UCD Psychology

Hugh Fulham-McQuillan is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the School of Psychology at UCD. He is working primarily on the Research Culture UCD initiative with Dr Sonya Deschênes. His focus on this initiative is to explore how aspects of research culture can impact mental health and wellbeing among those engaged in research activities, and to identify areas of strength and areas for improvement, also to develop a better understanding of researcher wellbeing. He completed his doctoral degree in Psychology in Trinity College Dublin. His research combines and intersects the areas of mental health, health psychology and health services research, using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

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Patrick Phillips

Educational Technologist

Patrick Phillips is an Educational Technologist with over 20 years of experience in integrating technology into education across international settings, including Vietnam, China, and the Philippines. He holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Education, specialising in Information Communication Technology. Currently, Patrick is contributing to the UCD Research Culture team by developing an Open Educational Resource (OER) training module, which is part of the Responsible Use of Research Metrics (RURM) project. This initiative is crucial for advancing UCD Research Culture's roadmap, which promotes open research and informed research assessment practices. Patrick’s work is characterised by a strong commitment to fostering collaborative and inclusive educational environments, his expertise in open-source learning and course design, and his passion for innovative pedagogy.

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Sonya Deschênes

Assistant Professor of Psychology

Dr Sonya Deschênes is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow in the University College Dublin School of Psychology. She obtained her doctoral degree in Psychology from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, and conducted her postdoctoral research in mental health epidemiology at McGill University in Montreal. Her research is at the intersection of health psychology and epidemiology, with interests in the comorbidity between mental and physical health conditions and the biopsychosocial mechanisms underlying these associations. More broadly, she is interested in the psychosocial determinants of both physical and mental health. Since joining UCD Dr Deschênes has established UCD PATH (Psychosocial Approaches To Health) Lab. Outside of the PATH Lab, Sonya is interested in research culture and, in 2022, she joined the UCD Research Culture Core Team to learn more about this area and contribute to initiatives to improve it.

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Jill Boyle

Senior Research Policy and Governance Specialist

Gillian Boyle holds a Masters in Agricultural Science from University College Dublin, specialising in Soil Science. She spent eleven years working as a researcher, then moved to her current position in the central research office in UCD. She worked as Team lead in the Proposal Support Team for fifteen years, providing advisory and support services to researchers submitting research proposals. Her current role includes research policy development and implementation and she provides support to the Research Integrity office. She was involved in the instigation of the UCD Research Culture Initiative in 2021 and continues to be an active team member in this project.

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Charles Ivar McGrath

Professor of History

Charles Ivar McGrath is Professor in the School of History, University College Dublin. He received a BA (1989) and an MA (1992) from University College Dublin and a PhD (1997) from the University of London. Professor McGrath is a leading and internationally recognised expert in eighteenth-century Irish and British history, with a particular specialisation in political, financial, legislative, religious, military, and intellectual history. Outside of academia, he spent three years serving as a private soldier in the Irish army including six months with UNIFIL in 1984-5, and eighteenth months in the civil service in London in 1992-3. In 2022, Dr McGrath joined the UCD Research Culture team.

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Maura Hiney

Adjunct Professor of Research Integrity, UCD Institute for Discovery

Maura Hiney is an Adjunct Professor of Research Integrity (RI) at the UCD Institute for Discovery. For much of her career, Dr Hiney was a senior manager at the Irish national funding body the Health Research Board where she was, most recently, Head of International Cooperation, Evaluation and Targeted Programmes, which included RI policy. Dr Hiney is an internationally recognised expert in RI. She was instrumental in developing the first National Policy Statement on Ensuring Integrity in Irish Research in 2014 which prompted a step change in how Irish RPOs and RFOs support RI policies and practices. Ireland is now considered a best-practice model for harmonising and embedding RI policies and practices in a national research system. In 2017 ALLEA invited her to lead a root and branch revision of the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (and a revision in 2023), which integrated broad stakeholder contributions across Europe, including industry for the first time, and produced

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Hugh Campbell

Deputy Research Integrity Officer

Hugh Campbell is Professor of Architecture and Head of Subject for Architecture in the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy at University College Dublin. His research interests include modern and contemporary architecture in Ireland, the relationship between photography, architecture and built space and the visual culture and development of cities. Professor Campbell currently serves as the UCD Deputy Research Integrity Officer and joined the UCD Research Culture team in 2023.

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Adrian Ottewill

Professor Emeritus, Mathematical Physics

Adrian Ottewill holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford and is Full Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematical Physics at University College Dublin. He is internationally recognised as a leader in research covering numerous aspects of quantum fields in curved space-time and has been involved in the emerging field of gravitational wave astronomy through the National Science Foundation’s ground-based LIGO project. Professor Ottewill was the founding director of UCD’s Institute for Discovery which supports emerging and early-stage interdisciplinary research. He served as the UCD Deputy Research Integrity Officer and was instrumental in establishing the UCD Research Culture Initiative.

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Contact Us

University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
E: research.culture@ucd.ie