February NUI Galway Researcher Awarded Fellowship to Develop Connections between Canada & Ireland to Promote Empathy Education

Professor Pat Dolan, UNESCO Chair and Director of the Institute for Lifecourse and Society at NUI Galway, has been awarded a prestigious D’Arcy McGee Beacon Fellowship from the Board of Trustees of the Ireland Canada University Foundation, a scholarship program which supports the development of connections between Canada and Ireland through online engagement. 

The D’Arcy McGee Beacon Fellowship facilitates critical connections over distance. This programme enables leading Irish and Canadian academics, researchers and thinkers to connect online, in a programme of activity designed to nurture and develop strong and fruitful collaborations which will enrich connections between both countries and the wider international community.

Speaking about the award, Professor Dolan said: “I am delighted to have been awarded this highly prestigious D’Arcy McGee Beacon Fellowship from the Board of Trustees of the Ireland Canada University Foundation. At a time when it is so important to feel connected with others, the programme will facilitate collaboration with academic colleagues in Canada. The particular focus of the Fellowship will be to promote Empathy education in Canada and Ireland which is a particular research interest of mine.”

This award follows on from the launch of a new initiative last year to introduce Empathy education for secondary school students in Ireland.  The programme, Activating Social Empathy, is part of a suite of work undertaken by a team of researchers at the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre NUI Galway that has developed a concrete basis for understanding empathy education among adolescents. A major focus of the UNESCO Chair’s work both nationally and internationally, is the role of empathy in the development of social understanding and its potential to enable young people to foster better social responsibility, civic behaviour and critically, action. 

Professor Dolan is joint founder of the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre and Director of the Institute for Lifecourse and Society at NUI Galway, and holds the prestigious UNESCO Chair in Children, Youth and Civic Engagement, the first to be awarded in the Republic of Ireland. He is currently Co-Principal Investigator on a UN Global Study measuring the social impact of COVID 19 on youth world wide - the study involves over 100 countries and all UN Regions.

For over 20 years, Professor Dolan has completed an extensive body of research on family issues including longitudinal research on adolescents, youth mental health, resilience and social support networks and has over 100 publications a wide range of academic publications including authored books and journals. His major research interests are Civic Engagement, Social Empathy, Family Support, Youth Mentoring, and Resilience. He has also extensive policy experience both nationally and internationally having worked with the Irish Government as well as UNESCO, UNICEF, and the United Nations Youth Office in New York, USA.

As part of the fellowship, Professor Dolan, along with host Dr Derek Gladwin, Department of Language and Literacy Education at University of British Columbia, Canada will be delivering a formal online public lecture as a Beacon Fellow and a series of workshop events later this year.

For more information on the D’Arcy McGee Beacon Fellowship visit http://www.icuf.ie/scholarships/darcy-mcgee-beacon-fellowship/ 

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