Our Team

Dr Pádraig MacNeela is a senior lecturer at the School of Psychology, NUI Galway. He has published 38 peer-reviewed articles in journals on health psychology, sexual health, and nursing, and teaches in health care and applied psychology.

Pádraig leads the Active* Consent programme, building on work in the area of positive, active consent that has continued since first collaborating with Rape Crisis Network Ireland in 2013. There are currently over 25 Higher Education Institutions nationally that collaborate with Active* Consent in workshop or drama-based engagement strategies.

Padraig’s research work follows a cycle of knowledge generation, partnership building, and practical implementation, reflected in work on sexual consent and building resilience and positive mental health among young people.

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Dr Siobhán O’Higgins moved to Ireland in 1979 after her primary degree. Siobhán has been promoting sexual health since 1990, working with parents, young people, teachers, educators, prisoners and professional groups like GPs, first as a youth and community worker, then as a teacher, lecturer, sexologist and clinical researcher, in the Department of Health Promotion and since 2010 the School of Psychology, NUI Galway. 

Her PhD, awarded in 2011, explored what young Irish people want to learn and how they wanted to be taught about sexuality and relationships. The research also looked at RSE teachers’ reactions to the young people’s data and what they felt they would need in order to teach the highlighted topics and methods. Siobhán translated her academic understanding into practice working with schools and parents with Sexual Health West (formerly AIDS West) as the basis for the WISER and Little WISER education and prevention programmes. 

Siobhan has published extensively in journals and contributed to books related to sexuality education, participative research methods and, more generally, on the health and wellbeing of children and young people. 
 
Siobhán has qualifications in counselling, youth and community work as well as postgraduate diplomas in Criminology and Sexology. Over the past 7 years, Siobhán has collaborated with Pádraig and Charlotte to translate research data into Consent workshops and dramas that raise awareness and sow the seeds to positively influence behaviour in relation to sexual consent. 

Dr Charlotte McIvor is a Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies and Deputy Head of the School of English and Creative Arts at the National University of Ireland, Galway. She is the author of Migration and Performance in Contemporary Ireland: Towards A New Interculturalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and the co-editor of The Methuen Companion to Interculturalism and Performance (with Daphne P. Lei, 2020), Interculturalism and Performance Now: New Directions? (with Jason King, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Devised Performance in Irish Theatre: Histories and Contemporary Practice (with Siobhán O’Gorman, Carysfort Press, 2015) and Staging Intercultural Ireland: Plays and Practitioner Perspectives (with Matthew Spangler, Cork University Press, 2014). 

She has published in journals including Theatre Research International, Theatre Topics, Modern Drama, Irish University Review, Irish Studies Review and multiple edited volumes on contemporary theatre and performance. Charlotte is also a director and dramaturge, and recent projects in Ireland include directing Frank McGuinness’ adaptation of Sophocles’ Electra (2014) and multiple iterations of the original devised theatre piece 100 Shades of Grey co-created with NUI Galway students addressing issues of sexual consent, rape and assault. 

In 2016, she co-directed the film adaptation of 100 Shades of Grey as Lucy’s House Party (with Mick Ruane) for the Manuela Riedo Foundation’s secondary school education project on sexual consent in Ireland. She has recently collaborated again with Ruane and NUI Galway students on the production of a new series of interactive short film series on consent released online over 2018/2019. 

In 2019, she directed and produced the inaugural national third-level theatre tour of The Kinds of Sex You Might Have in College, an updated and expanded version of 100 Shades of Grey, featuring a company of professional NUI Galway alumni actors. 

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Dr Lorraine Burke graduated with a BSc in Physiology in 2009 and has since completed an MA and PhD in Health Promotion, all at NUI Galway. She has previously worked as a research assistant on the Irish Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study.

Lorraine’s research interests include child, adolescent and young adult health and health behaviours; sexual health and behaviour, quantitative, qualitative and participatory research methods. Lorraine is currently a post-doctoral researcher on the Active* Consent team focusing on the adaptation and implementation of a national college level survey of students’ sexual experiences.

Dr Kate Dawson is a post-doctoral researcher, she finished her PhD in Child and Youth research in 2019. Her research focused on young peoples’ experiences with pornography and aimed to develop an evidence base to establish the content and delivery methods for porn literacy interventions for adolescents.

Kate also holds a Masters in Health Promotion, and has also worked as a sex educator with Sexual Health West since 2013. Kate has collaborated on several international research projects, including a longitudinal study which explored the links between pornography use and sexual violence, and a project exploring sexual satisfaction among couples in consensually non-monogamous relationships. 

Kate has published in journals including Journal of Sex Research, Aggressive Behaviour, Psychology and Sexuality, and Porn Studies, as well as contributing to book chapters on sexuality in Ireland. Since 2016 Kate has collaborated with Bedfellows research project on “Porn as Pedagogy”, a visual art installation which explores queer sexuality, which was premiered at Tate Modern. 

Kate has completed several sexual health-based training programmes, including the HSE Foundations in Sexual Health Programme and child protection training and the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) “Speakeasy Plus” training, equipping her with the knowledge and skill to be able to work with people with specific challenges or learning needs. Kate leads the porn literacy intervention development project.

Siobhán (PhD Massey University, MSc NUIG,  BA UCD,AFHEA) is a Research Associate with the Active* Consent team. Her research experience is located in the critical health and social psychology space. This is a social justice informed approach that understands psychological issues as located in sociopolitical, historical contexts. In step with this critical perspective, she applies post-structuralist, sociological thinking to the Active* Consent programme—looking beyond the individual as a level of analysis. Specifically, she draws on social constructionist thinking to explore how consent is entangled with essentialist understandings of gender, and notions of ‘good’ sexual citizenship in our hyper-individualised neoliberal cultural context.

Siobhán applies critical methodologies to explore alternative ways of understanding gendered topics. For example, she used a feminist discursive approach to sexual scripting theory in her doctoral research to explore how young people construct sexual subjectivities when making sense of pornography, and the ways youth sexuality is discursively constructed by key stakeholders (youth, caregivers and educators), which ultimately shapes pedagogical responses. Accordingly, she is interested in challenging dominant discourse that restrict the recognition of young people's agency, and endeavours to make space for the development of curricula that resonate with young people's realities. In this vein, her research to date has led her to see value in using an ethical sexual citizenship or sexual and reproductive justice approach to education about consent and other topics related to sexual health.

Dr. Caroline West is an outreach coordinator with Active* Consent, working to promote consent culture in Ireland.

Caroline holds a PhD and MA in Sexuality Studies from Dublin City University. Additionally, she holds a HDIP in Psychoanalysis, a BA in Social Science, a certificate in Cyberpsychology from IADT and a certificate in Sexual Consent and Health Promotion from NUIG. Caroline has spent over two decades working and volunteering in social care; eight of which have been working with women and children fleeing domestic violence. Caroline has been a media commentator about consent and sexual wellness since 2016

Alexandra Black is the Creative Content Producer and Campaign Lead for the Active* Consent programme. She first became involved with the Active* Consent programme by training as a SMART Consent student facilitator in DCU, and joined the team full-time in 2020. 

Alexandra completed her BA in Film Studies and English Literature at Trinity College Dublin in 2015. She also earned a Postgraduate Certificate in Sexuality and Sexual Health Education from DCU in 2019, with her research project focusing on female pop stars’ representation of sexuality and empowerment within patriarchal constructs. Alexandra has a strong interest in how media and pop culture shape our understanding of sexuality, as well as how new media can be used for health promotion.

Rebecca Connolly is a graduate of NUI Galway and Leiden University. She first became involved in the Active* Consent team following her BA in Psychology with Sociology and Politics where she studied Human Sexuality. Rebecca also has a strong interest in the study of sexology, sexualities, gender and diversities. Rebecca is currently a research assistant on the Active* Consent team. 

Theresa O’Rourke is a research assistant on the Active*Consent team. She completed her BSc in Biomedical Science majoringin Anatomy at NUI Galway in 2018. In 2020, she graduated with an MSc in Psychological Science from the University of Glasgow. Her MSc research project investigated individual differences to predict COVID-19 anxiety and safety behaviours using quantitative research methods.

Theresa was involved with Glasgow University’s Sexpression group, which delivered sex education to youth groups across Glasgow and held sex-positive events for students. Theresa’s research interests primarily include sexual health & wellbeing, sexual functioning, holistic sex education and relationships.

Kate Tierney is the Project Manager at Active*Consent.