Course Staff
Dr. Louise Caffrey is the Course Director of the Masters in Applied Social Research and also delivers the Evaluation methods module. Dr. Philip Curry leads on the Quantitative Research Methods Module while Dr. Paula Mayock delivers Qualitative Research Methods and Research Ethics. Dr. Catherine Conlon teaches Research Design and Dr. Lynne Cahill teaches literature review methods.
Dr. Louise Caffrey is course director of the MSc Applied Social Research and Assistant Professor in Social Policy in the School of Social Work and Social Policy at Trinity College Dublin. Much of Louise's research stems from a core interest in the challenges of implementing public policy in organisations. Her research has sought to better understand, firstly why implementing policy is so challenging and, secondly, how we can better evaluate public policy initiatives and programmes so that evaluation findings are more useful for policy makers. Louise specialises in understanding public sector organisations as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) and using Systems approaches and Realist Evaluation & Synthesis approaches. Her research has studied policy implementation in both child protection and health systems and explores overarching themes of system safety, inter-professional working and intended and unintended effects of performance management and measurement. As well as teaching evaluation methods on the MSc, externally Louise (with Dr. Edurne Garcia Iriarte) has designed a evaluation methods teaching module for United Nations staff. She also teaches systems thinking approaches to social work students and critical analysis and argument development to social policy students.
Dr. Philip Curry is a social psychologist and Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College Dublin. He teaches quantitative research methods to students of the Masters in Applied Social Research and Psychology to undergraduate Social Work students. His research focuses on the perspectives, experiences and behaviours of children and young people in relation to migration and diversity. He is particularly interested in empirical evaluation of policy initiatives to enhance inter-ethnic relations among children, the driving question behind his research being to determine what children, schools and communities can do to ensure that all parties get the most out of multi-cultural societies.
Dr. Paula Mayock is an Associate Professor in Social Policy at the School of Social Work and Social Policy and Senior Researcher at the Children's Research Centre, Trinity College Dublin. She is a qualitative methodologist with a particular interest in biographical and qualitative longitudinal research methods and is currently Course Director of the Masters in Applied Social Research. Her research focuses primarily on the lives and experiences of marginalised youth, covering areas such as homelessness, drug use and drug problems, sexuality, and mental health. Paula is the recipient of numerous research awards from statutory and voluntary agencies (e.g. Department of Children and Youth Affairs, Health Service Executive, Crisis Pregnancy Agency, Homeless Agency, National Office for Suicide Prevention, Gay and Lesbian Equality Network, Dublin Region Homeless Executive, Focus Ireland). She is a NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) INVEST Post-doctoral Fellow (2006-07) and an IRC (Irish Research Council) Research Fellow (2009-10). She was also the recipient of an IRCHSS 'New Ideas' Award (2011). Paula is the author of numerous articles, book chapters and research reports. She is an Assistant Editor of the international journal Addiction and the founder and chairperson of the Women’s Homelessness in Europe Network.
Catherine is an Associate Professor in Social Policy at the School of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College Dublin. Her research interests are: gender, sexuality and reproductive health; intergenerational family relations; sexual socialization and; critical qualitative methodologies. Her teaching areas currently include Families and Social Policy in Ireland and Research Methods for Practitioners. She has a strong track record of applied policy research including for the HSE Crisis Pregnancy Programme/Crisis Pregnancy Agency, the Equality Authority and the Combat Poverty Agency. She co-authored, with Evelyn Mahon and Lucy Dillon Women and Crisis Pregnancy published by Government Publications in 1998. Recent academic publications include lead authored articles in Gender & Society (Women (Re)Negotiating Care across Family Generations: Intersections of Gender and Socioeconomic Status. 28, (5) 729-751, 2014. ) and Qualitative Research (Emergent Reconstruction’ in Grounded Theory: Learning from Team Based Interview Research. 15, (1) 39-56, 2015). Forthcoming publications include a co-edited collected (with Aideen Quilty and Sinead Kennedy) entitled The Abortion Papers Ireland Volume Two with Cork University Press. An interest in innovative translation of applied policy research led to a recent project translating research with women concealing pregnancy into an Opera performance in collaboration with colleagues in Music and English.
Dr. Lynne Cahill
At the School of Social Work and Social Policy, Dr. Lynne Cahill has the title of Adjunct Assistant Professor. In 2009, Lynne finished her MSc in Applied Social Research, and in 2018, she completed her PhD at the School of Social Work and Social Policy. Her doctoral research examined intimate partner abuse in female same sex relationships. For the previous three years, Lynne is the lead researcher on a national programme to address long-term homelessness, Housing First. Her areas of interest include systems change/ reform, homelessness, and LGBTQ experiences of intimate partner abuse. Lynne teaches database searching, qualitative research techniques, and how to do literature reviews.