The Irish State needs to defend its citizens’ rights to a home and protect them from the power of global financial corporations, according to NUI Galway’s Dr Padraic Kenna. His new book, Housing Law, Rights and Policy, provides the first comprehensive reference and critique of the legal and policy elements of the Irish housing system. According to Dr Kenna: “There is an urgent need to re-evaluate what housing law and policy is actually about. Housing and mortgage law must be more than the means of repaying irresponsible loans from international financial corporations. It must be more than disparate pieces of legislation, cases, policy reports and media commentaries on the state of the market. Housing as a means of personal, social and community development must be given a legal status”. Dr Kenna, who is a lecturer with the School of Law at NUI Galway, added: “Today, we need a balance in our housing law and policy. Now might be the time for a new set of representative national organisations of mortgage consumers, social housing tenants, and those who require adequate and affordable housing at Irish and EU level. The new book from Dr Kenna, Housing Law, Rights and Policy, brings together for the first time all the legal and policy approaches which could inform a new paradigm in Irish housing. The book examines the development of the Irish housing system, including contemporary policy perspectives. It also outlines and evaluates the law, rights and policy in relation to older people, people with disabilities, homeless people, State housing finance, private mortgages, housing rights, planning, housing standards, building regulations, local authority housing, private rented housing, apartments, multi-unit developments and estates, housing associations and co-operatives, rural housing and EU housing related law. Housing Law, Rights and Policy is published by Clarus Press. -ends-

The Discipline of Botany & Plant Science at NUI Galway will host the 2011 annual meeting of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, which will run from 18 to 21 June. This is the first time the meeting has been held in Galway and only the second time in Ireland in the Society’s 175 year history. The meeting is aimed at both academic and amateur botanists from throughout Britain and Ireland and will consist of the AGM and a variety of talks by leading experts. The 2011 meeting is taking place in Galway due to its close proximity to some of the best botanical regions in Ireland, including the Burren, Connemara and the Aran Islands. Day excursions to each of these will follow the meeting, led by local botanist experts. Founded in 1836, the Botanical Society of the British Isles is the leading society in Britain and Ireland for the study of our native flora, its distribution and taxonomy and has a membership of over 2,000. Keynote speakers will include: Dr Karen Molloy, NUI Galway Senior Researcher, who will deliver a talk on vegetation change and land-use history in the West of Ireland; Dr Sharon Parr, Burren Farming for Conservation Programme and John Conaghan, Ecological Consultant, will speak about the Burren and Connemara flora; and Dr Matthew Jebb, Director of the National Botanic Gardens, will deliver his talk on Irish archaeophytes (ancient plant introductions). Dr Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, Conference Organiser and Lecturer with the Discipline of Botany & Plant Science at NUI Galway, said: “It will surely be the first time so many botanists will be seen out botanising together anywhere in Ireland. They are coming because Galway is the gateway to three of the best botanical sites in Ireland and Britain. The interest is so large that we have had to divide them into three separate tours of the Burren and Connemara, with delegates all meeting in Carron, Co. Clare and Roundstone, Connemara for an evening meal.” For a full schedule visit http://www.bsbi.org.uk/meetings.html#Galway. Registration is now closed. -ends-

NUI Galway Executive MBA students are in New York this week on an International Study visit to Fordham University. The 25 NUI Galway students will embrace various lectures, teachings and topical presentations from the highly esteemed academics at Fordham University. The combination of on-campus tuition, key industry site visits and presentations will enable the students to receive full exposure to the most current thinking in Business Administration and Management from the US. This inaugural trip by the Executive MBA class has been heralded by Dr Ann Torres, Programme Director at NUI Galway, as: “A wonderful chance for the Executive MBA students to embrace this unique learning opportunity in New York City. Fordham has a wonderful reputation of producing the best and the added advantage of being so ideally located to the Financial District and the driving force of the US economy. The exposure of these Masters’ students to the exciting and unique academic offering that they will receive at Fordham will certainly offer them a distinct competitive advantage as Executive MBA graduates.” The students will be accompanied on their trip by Dr Torres and Dr Emer Mulligan, Head of the J. E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics at NUI Galway, as well as other members of the academic staff at the University’s Business School. Goldman Sachs in association with Galway University Foundation and NUI Galway Alumni Association are hosting a welcome reception for the NUI Galway Executive MBA class, enabling them to connect with successful NUI Galway graduates based in the US. This is an ideal opportunity for the current students to observe how successful NUI Galway graduates have been all over the world and the vital roles that they play in managing successful organisations in New York and indeed across the US. Suzanne Ryan, Executive MBA Student and Alumni Association Coordinator of the trip commented that: “This is the highlight of our academic studies to date; it is a wonderful opportunity for us as students of NUI Galway to get access to such esteemed lectures and wonderful facilities at Fordham University as part of our EMBA programme. As managers, we can actively learn from and directly apply this experience to our own work environments on our return.” Dr Emer Mulligan, Head of J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics said: “This exciting academic exposure for the Executive MBA students. We are proud of the esteem that the NUI Galway Business School is held in internationally, and I look forward to establishing greater links with Fordham University and other US Universities through innovative programmes in the future.” -Ends-

The School of Psychology at NUI Galway will host a one-day workshop entitled Mindfulness and Values in Acceptance Commitment Therapy. The workshop will take place in Áras na Mac Léinn on Wednesday, 15 June. The workshop will focus on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), an approach to psychotherapy and sound living, and will be delivered by Dr Kelly Wilson, co-developer of ACT and Associate Professor of Psychology with the University of Mississippi. ACT is based on emerging clinical science that demonstrates the broad utility of mindfulness and values in human wellbeing. It’s a hybrid therapy in terms of approach and technique, bringing together aspects of mindfulness, Gestalt therapy, and humanist-existential thought, all organised under a contemporary contextual behavioral framework. The ACT approach is about embracing necessary suffering in order to make more committed, life-affirming choices and live in accordance with deeply held personal values. Dr Wilson has devoted himself to the development and dissemination of ACT. Over the last 20 years, he has published numerous articles, chapters and books on ACT and the theory and empirical science underlying it and has led workshops in 21 countries. He has recently published a book, Mindfulness for Two, on the use of mindfulness in Acceptance Commitment Therapy and this workshop will present many of the methods and techniques discussed there. Speaking about the upcoming one-day workshop, Dr Ian Stewart, Lecturer with the School of Psychology at NUI Galway, said: “ACT is an increasingly popular form of psychotherapy in the United States and internationally. The key to its success is its basis in a unified empirically-based understanding of human psychology. Kelly Wilson is an expert in both the research and the therapeutic delivery of this approach. I’d thoroughly recommend this workshop to any clinician or professional for whom an understanding of human psychology is a key part of their work.” For further information on the workshop, or to register, visit www.conference.ie. -Ends-

A spin-out company from the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI). at NUI Galway is bringing a new experience to music lovers. Seevl provides new ways to explore the cultural and musical universe of users’ favourite bands and artists, and lets them discover other connected ones, based on a rich set of connections that can exist. The service, free for its users, offers an online discovery user-experience, whether it is by browsing artists, labels or genres, or by combining these features together to find new ones. It also makes its data available to developers that want to build new applications on top of the platform. Dr Alexandre Passant, CEO and founder of Seevl, which is based in Galway City, Ireland, said: “We want to recreate, online, the music discovery experience that people have when reading records sleeves, trying to know every fact about their favourite artists, or engaging in conversations about the bands they like. To do so, we get data from various sources on the Web to build consolidated artist profiles, so that we can then enable semantic search and explanatory recommendations of related bands. For instance, if you like the Beatles, we will tell you that you may like the Quarrymen as it used to be the former band of most of their members! Combined with the social experience, these features make Seevl a unique music discovery service.” To enable its platform, Seevl brings together several years of R&D in Semantic Web and Linked Data technologies that have been researched at DERI, which is a Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET) established with funding from Science Foundation Ireland. Seevl also partners with OpenLink software to deliver its infrastructure. Stefan Decker, Director of DERI, said: “This shows that our research can have an impact not only in academia but also in the industrial world, and that DERI is focused on supporting spin out activity from NUI Galway”. For further information visit the public beta site at http://seevl.net/. -Ends-