Biography

My primary research interests include the comparative political economy of labour relations, welfare states, income inequality, fiscal adjustment and processes of institutional change in the European Union.
My Ph.D. dissertation was an examination into the political economy of institutional change in European varieties of capitalism. Using a comparative historical case study I traced the rise and fall of Irish social partnership to the policy constraints of the EMU.

Since finishing my Ph.D. I have been working on a project with the International Labour Organisation (ILO), examining the politics of adjustment in Ireland to the Eurozone crisis.

I am also involved in a comparative book project examining the trade union response to the financial crisis and I serve on the editorial board of the new e-journal of International and Comparative Labour Studies.

In addition to these research projects I write regularly for a variety of online blogs, journals and newspapers.

From 2008-2011 I was a Teaching Assistant at University College Dublin and an associate faculty lecturer at the National College of Ireland. This diverse teaching portfolio included social policy, comparative politics, research methods, political theory, industrial relations and sociology.

From 2011-2012 I worked as a researcher at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS), at the University of Amsterdam. This involved a comparative study into the labour market reform strategy of Spain, Ireland, Germany and Netherlands to the Eurozone crisis.

Outside the silos of my research I can be found daydreaming about a zero growth economy, reading fiction and cycling through the urban jungle.