Explore UCD

UCD Home >
overlay image

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.

Research Culture Team

Get to know UCD Research Culture

Profile photo of Grace Mulcahy

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.

View Profile

Teams:

Profile photo of Colleen Thomas

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.

View Profile

Teams:

Profile photo of Ruth O'Kelly

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.

Teams:

Audrey_Plan_photo

Audrey Plan

Research Culture Engagement Specialist

Dr Audrey M Plan holds a PhD in Political Science from Trinity College Dublin, and was previously an ERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the UCD Sutherland School of Law. She specialises in public international law and international judicial politics, and continues to research and teach in her field of expertise. Audrey is passionate about interdisciplinarity: she is the PI for the ReCLAIM-funded UCD Postdocs Spotlight Seminar Series, and co-runs multiple forums such as the Irish Jurisprudence Society Workshops and the PSAI Specialist Group on European Studies. As Research Engagement Specialist, Audrey supports initiatives fostering an inclusive, collaborative and respectful Research Culture, for all members of UCD's research ecosystem.

Teams:

Sewali Ghosh photo

Sewali Ghosh

Research Culture Trainer / Seed Funding Specialist

Dr. Sewali Ghosh is a STEM Education Coordinator with over 8 years of diverse experience spanning education, research, and healthcare. Currently at University College Dublin, she manages the Curiosity Programme for Transition Year students while coordinating the €2M+ AI2MED EU project at Griffith College Dublin across 8 countries. Her background includes founding Bintegrate Research Solutions to deliver researcher training programmes, coordinating COVID-19 testing operations, teaching as an Assistant Professor at SIMATS, and working in pharmaceutical quality control and cancer genomics research. With a PhD in Bioinformatics and a Master of Public Health, Sewali combines scientific expertise with educational innovation to make STEM accessible and inspiring for diverse communities.

Teams:

Profile photo of Hugh Fulham-McQuillan

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.

Teams:

Profile photo of Sonya Deschênes

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.

View Profile

Teams:

Profile photo of Jill Boyle

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.

Teams:

Profile photo of Charles Ivar McGrath

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.

View Profile

Teams:

Profile photo of Maura Hiney

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

Teams:

Profile photo of Hugh Campbell

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.

View Profile

Teams:

Profile photo of Adrian Ottewill

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.

View Profile

Teams:

Steering Group

The Steering Group will provide advice, guidance and reflective assessment on the rollout and progress of UCD’s Research Culture Initiative.

The current Steering Group members are:

Professor Emma Sokell, Dean of Graduate Studies

Rory Carey, Director - Culture & Engagement

Aine Moore, Senior Manager – Research Programmes, UCD Research

Contact Us

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