October NUI Galway announces two new senior appointments

NUI Galway announces two new senior appointments

Helen Maher joins University as Vice President for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and Paul Dodd joins as Vice President for Engagement

NUI Galway has announced the appointment of two new Vice Presidents.

Helen Maher takes up the role of VP for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion having worked as Vice President of Carlow College, St Patrick’s for more than two years. 

Paul Dodd takes up the role of VP for Engagement having spent almost a decade at University of California, where he was Associate Vice Chancellor for Research on the Davis campus.

President of NUI Galway, Professor Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh, said: “The addition of Helen Maher and Paul Dodd to our leadership team at NUI Galway will further enhance our University community, our commitment to our values and our engagement for the public good. Their appointments reflect the sense of excellence and the ambition which are central to our work.

“Helen Maher comes to NUI Galway with a huge passion for equality, diversity and inclusion. Her career is testament to a life-long commitment to the public good, to partnership and to education as a critical catalyst for equality, diversity and inclusion.

“Paul Dodd brings a wealth of talent and experience to bear on his new role, not least from his work in Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), IDA Ireland and higher education in the US. NUI Galway and our wider community has much to gain from Paul’s deep appreciation for the importance and role of building partnerships at home and overseas.”

Further information on the new Vice Presidents: 

Helen Maher will take up the role of VP Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in January 2022. She has worked on equality and social justice issues in higher education, civil society organisations and consultancy including with An Cosán, Tallaght; Waterford Women’s Centre; the Inner City Organisations Network in Dublin. She was appointed Vice President at Carlow College, St Patrick’s in 2019, the first woman to hold the post.

Helen has also served as an International Human Rights Observer in Mexico in the 1990s; is a founder member of Rohingya Action Ireland; and she was lead researcher for a project under the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation on good practice in community based approaches to peacebuilding in the border region of Ireland.

As Vice President at Carlow College, Helen was responsible for developing and leading high level institutional change processes, strategy, collaborative partnerships, stakeholder engagement and EDI. She was the College’s representative on the HEA’s National Committee for Gender Equality, the Athena Swan National Committee.

Helen holds a BA degree from UCD, an MA in Peace Studies from the University of Bradford and is completing her PhD thesis at the School of Law and Government, DCU.

Her research to date has examined the tension between feminism and nationalism; gender, democratisation and post-conflict reconstruction; higher education, civic engagement and collaborative partnerships and community responses to peacebuilding. Her current research focuses on gender equality and the transition to democracy in South Africa.

Dr Paul Dodd will take up the role of VP Engagement in early January 2022. Originally from Bray, Co Wicklow, Paul moves back to Ireland from University of California Davis. He contributed to the significant growth of UC Davis research revenue over the past nine years, most recently seeing an all-time campus record of US$965m in new research awards in one year. He has also been leading the establishment and advancement of many institutional partnerships domestically and internationally for UC Davis, a skill set he hopes to put to good use in his new role in Galway.