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College of Arts, Social Sciences and Celtic Studies

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions are the European Union’s reference programme for doctoral education and postdoctoral training. The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fund excellent research and innovation and equip researchers at all stages of their career with new knowledge and skills, through mobility across borders and exposure to different sectors and disciplines. MSCA are open to all domains of research and innovation and encourage international cooperation to set-up strategic collaborations.

See below a list of the supervisors particularly interested in hosting MSCA PF candidates.

Name of Supervisor	Research Areas	Proposed Projects	Postdoctoral Fellow Expertise	Extra information
Dr. Ciara Egan	Cognitive Neuroscience, Dyslexia	Examining wellbeing in neurodiverse university students in Ireland	Background in psychology/neuroscience, interest in or experience of working with neurodiverse participants, statistical skills and data wrangling (preferably in R)
Dr. Chris Noone	Health inequalities and experiences of health and wellbeing in the LGBT+ community. Challenging the narratives of risk and vulnerability that are often perpetuated in relation to our community by mainstream medical and psychological research. Keywords: Health Inequalities; LGBT+ Health; Sexual Health	Investigating Increases in STIs in Europe from a Systems Theory Perspective	Quantitative and qualitative skills
Dr. Edward Herring	The archaeology and history of pre- and early Roman Italy, especially South Italy; intercultural connections in early Italy; ethnicity in antiquity; South Italian red-figured pottery; South Italian Matt-Painted pottery; Etruscan black- and red-figured pottery
Dr. Pádraic Moran	Cultural history from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages (fourth to ninth centuries AD). Education, scholarship and language interaction in Latin, Greek, Old Irish, including manuscripts. Glosses and glossing. Digital Humanities (digital editions and databases; Natural Language Processing).
Prof. Anne O'Connor	Translation history, institutional translation, religious translation, multilingualism and non-professional translation.	Projects that link with research methodologies currently in use in PIETRA/MISTE/VICO: https://pietra.universityofgalway.ie/	Translation Studies; languages; sociolinguistics; corpus linguistics and translation
Prof. Chaosheng Zhang	GIS; Environmental geochemistry; Soil; Spatial analysis; Environment and Health; Potentially toxic elements.	Use of machine learning to explore hot spots of potentially toxic elements in potatoes grown in Ireland based on soil geochemical data	Geographical Information System (GIS), Environmental Sciences, Machine Learning, Agriculture
Dr. Anna Gasperini	Children's literature and culture; Medical and Health Humanities; Comparative literature; Food Studies; Historical and Contextual approaches; 19th century to present.	I welcome project proposals in the following areas: Comparative and transnational children's literature; Literature, food, and the young; Child health in historical perspective; Intersections between literature and child health.	A background in literary studies is recommended; any methodological and theoretical background is welcome.	I am an alumna of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie IF Programme. My project FED (https://www.unive.it/pag/39059) was developed at Ca' Foscari University of Venice (Italy), after which I moved on to receive IRC funding within the Laureate programme.
Dr. Manuela Heinz	Diversity and equity in education; cultural responsivity in education; teacher education; education leadership.	Transforming Teacher Education: Developing Cultural Humility and New Pedagogical Approaches for Transcultural Responsiveness.	PhD in Education, Sociology or Psychology
Dr. Bernadine Brady	Youth civic engagement; youth work; youth mentoring; empathy.	Mapping social mentoring policy, provision and practice in Europe (or open to other ideas)
Prof. Alison Forrestal	Early modern history; history of religion; history of the Catholic Church; early modern French history; early modern Irish history; early modern social and cultural history.
Dr. Tony Tracy	Film studies; masculinity and culture; ageing; creative industries; film/media education.
Prof. Erin McCarthy	Early modern English literature; women's writing; manuscript studies; bibliography and the history of the book; digital/computational humanities; network analysis			I am the Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project "STEMMA: Systems of Transmitting Early Modern Manuscript Verse, 1475–1700." I would particularly welcome EOIs from candidates whose interests align with the project, including (but not limited to) historical network analysis, the transmission of early modern literature in manuscript, and/or computational approaches to early modern culture. I would also welcome applications from candidates whose training aligns more closely with STEM disciplines who would like to apply their expertise to a large historical dataset. Please contact me if you have questions or if you would like to discuss possibilities.
Dr. Noha Atef	Social Media; Alternative Media; Digital Communities; Health Communication.			I welcome postdoctoral researchers interested in exploring the complexities of online social life through qualitative research and digital ethnography. My research focuses on areas such as social media subcultures, the spread of mis/disinformation, and the dynamics of immigration media coverage and online hate speech. A significant portion of my work involves Arab communities, and I am fluent in Arabic. I am committed to mentoring researchers who are driven to produce insightful and meaningful work in these fields.
Dr. Aidan Thomson	Western art music c. 1890–1945, particularly in the UK and Ireland, including historical, analytical and critical approaches, especially reception.
Dr. Patrick Collins	Creativity, Culture, Place based Development, Urban Change, Rural Creative Economy, Participatory Planning, Democracy	The development of UrbanLab Galway, due to open its doors in 2026 in Nuns Island, Galway. The role of UrbanLab Galway is to develop a variety of platforms to facilitate the broadest possible public engagement. Our aim is to ensure that all voices contribute to the future development of places. We make use of traditional methods and more innovative digital ones. These methods serve the primary goal of UrbanLab: to enable the dreaming and to inspire the imagination of the greatest number of people to collectively co-create the future: www.urbanlabgalway.ie	Public Engagement, mapping, data visualisation, software development, 3D visualisation, placemaking, creative practices
Dr. Nessa Cronin	Environmental Humanities, Culture, Climate Change, Environment, Nature Writing, Irish Literature, Landscape Studies, Creative Practice, Eco-social arts practice, Decolonial pedagogies.
Dr. R óisín Healy	History of modern Germany, Poland and Ireland; transnational and comparative history; colonialism within Europe; migration and mobility; religion; nationalism.	Religious Conversion after Emancipation: European Perspectives.	Knowledge of scholarship and experience of researching religious identity and/or practice in ethnically diverse contexts in modern Europe, not necessarily Germany, Poland or Ireland
Dr. Kevin O'Sullivan	Contemporary environmental history; history of global justice; history of humanitarianism; history of human rights; contemporary Irish history		I am open to mentoring interdisciplinary projects; potential researchers must have some experience of using historical methods.