Doctoral Researchers

Kowsalya Duraisamy (2021-present)

Project title: Working Women, Health and Development: A Gendered Health-Framework for Sustainable Development in Sri Lanka

Kowsalya’s PhD research intends to study gender dimensions of occupational health and the significance of health promotion of working women in stimulating sustainable development in Sri Lanka from a Feminist Political Economic perspective. This study treats labour laws and occupational health legislations as areas of prime importance through which gender-based health equity and women’s occupational health, safety and wellbeing can be appropriately addressed. Therefore, it aims to explore the ways to incorporate gender analysis into the country’s labour laws and occupational health legislations to increase women workforce efficiency and Productivity.

• Funding: Accelerating Higher Education Expansion and Development Operation (AHEAD), Ministry of Education, Sri Lanka (Funded by the World Bank)
• Project Supervisor: Dr. Nata Duvvury

Sheryl Fairchild (2016 – present)

Project title: Global Women’s Studies in the American Community College Classroom: Theory, Pedagogy and Student Identity

Commencing in 2016, the purpose of my doctoral research project is to theorize the complex and contradictory learning environment of the global women’s studies classroom in the United States, bringing together feminist theories, activist perspectives, and considerations of the material conditions of women’s day-to-day lives. Rooted in my own teaching practice, the project will consider not only how theory and practice map onto the classroom, but also how “global women’s studies” influences student knowledge and identity. I am particularly interested in the community college classroom where a majority of students live materially in the Two-Thirds World (Mohanty, 2003), inhabiting their own transnational refugee and immigrant family histories and identities, while situated in the privileged location of being “so lucky to live in the U.S.”

• Project supervisor: Dr. Niamh Reilly 

Lorrie Hayman (2022 – present)

Project title: Cyber-located Sexual Violence: Exploring Women's Experiences in Ireland

Lorrie's research explores women’s lived experiences of unwanted negative, sexually-based behaviours/actions occurring online and via Internet-connected devices, including nonconsensual image-based behaviours/actions and unwanted comments/threats/sexual requests, collectively referred to as Cyber-located Sexual Violence. She applies Feminist Research Practice in her mixed-methods quantitative-qualitative research.

• Funding: Irish Research Council, Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship (from 2023), formally a Hardiman Research Scholar (2022-2023)
• Project supervisor: Dr Stacey Scriver