Steering Committee

Ciara O'HAlloran holds an MA in Digital Humanities from University College Cork and a BA in Anthropology and Sociology from NUI Maynooth. Ciara has worked on a wide number of local, community and area development projects across Ireland, with a focus on resilient and sustainable communities. She currently works on communications for Civic and Community Engagement in University College Cork. Research interests include design thinking and design science, service design, service learning, civic scholarship and communications that can connect, empower and engage people around new models of working together for more ethical, equitable and sustainable societies.

Susan is an Associate Professor in Development Practice in the Discipline of Geography, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin. Her research interests are in international development ethics, policy, and practice, issues in governance and justice, human rights and climate change, and gender and social inclusion. She am the Principal Investigator of GEOFORMATIONS: the geographies of dynamic governance assemblages in development cooperation civil society spaces, funded by the European Research Council (ERC-2022-STG), and research group leader for the Climate Justice in Development Research Group. Susan is also Chair of the Research Ethics Committee, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College; a member of the Department of Foreign Affairs Audit Committee (2021-2027); and a Scientific Committee Member of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD since 2014). Previously, she served as Chair of Trinity International Development Initiative (2013-2020); UCC External Examiner for BSc in International Development (2019-2023); Chair of the Board of Trustees - Oxfam Ireland (2016-2023) & Board of Supervisors, Oxfam International (2018-2021); BISA Ethics and World Politics Co-conveyor (2019-2023) and steering committees of Future Earth Ireland and COALITION 2030.

Susan completed her Ph.D. at University College Dublin researching the politics and ethics of international assistance (2008-2012). Following completion of an MA in Politics and International Relations (1996) Susan spent several years teaching political theory and the philosophical foundations of human rights. She then spent ten years in industry working as a Manager with Accenture. Her research and teaching bring to bear almost thirty years of research and professional experience in academia and industry.

Mairéad Cluskey is a lecturer in the Department of Environmental Humanities and Social Sciences on the Mayo Campus of the Atlantic Technological University teaching across several programmes including Community Development, Youth Work, Outdoor Education and Social Care. Prior to her role in ATU, Mairéad lectured in TU Dublin and taught across all of the programmes in the Department of Humanities. Mairéad is a professionally qualified community development and youth worker and has extensive experience in this area. She is also committed to community engagement and is currently a board member of the Mayo Traveller Movement and the chairperson of Youth Work Ireland, Galway. Mairéad has a particular interest in the professional formation of students in value-based professions, to support an engagement with people and planet that is concerned with positive social change. Mairéad enjoys working alongside students, lecturers and frontline practitioners alike in her continuing journey as a learner, teacher and researcher.

Catherine Corcoran has worked in the development sector for over 30 years with in Ireland and Africa, at management, policy and community levels with CONCERN Worldwide and also in academia at the Technological University of the Shannon. She has led and advised organisations on strategic and community-led planning and provided leadership, research, technical support and advice within challenging contexts, developing and leading consortia and partnerships at an International level. Her PhD research focuses on community-led planning and resilience building.

Dr. Eilish Dillon is an Assistant Professor at the Maynooth University Department of International Development. Eilish has been actively engaged in global and development education in Ireland for over 30 years. She has 10 years second-level teaching experience and 20 years’ experience in programme design, curriculum development, co-ordination and teaching in higher education. She has been an active contributor to civil society global development and education projects during this time through work with Comhlámh, Amnesty International, Banúlacht and the Irish Development Education Association (IDEA). She completed doctoral research in adult and higher education and has published widely on global and development education and communications in peer reviewed journals and books has engaged in supporting ethical global development communications in Ireland for many years, acting as an advisor to Dóchas on its working groups on the Dóchas Code of Conduct on Images and Messages (2010 - 2016) and on its Worldview Research Project (2020 - 2021).

Dr Sheila Long is a qualified social care worker and experienced educationalist with expertise in international children’s rights education, specialized in early childhood education and care, child participation and child protection and adult education with practice experience in Ireland and East Africa and 12 years’ experience in academia and early years teacher training. She has published in the area of children’s rights education and initial early years teacher education.

Keitumetse Mabole is a PhD student at Department & Adult & Community Education, Maynooth University with a passion to grow knowledge and skills that can benefit the wellbeing and livelihoods of our communities. A recipient of the Irish Research Council  Government of Ireland scholarship for his research ‘The impact of indigenous knowledge in enhancing lifelong learning amongst the marginalised communities: The case of the San communities in Botswana’, his research explores elements of indigenous knowledge that can inform more sustainable strategies of development from the Global South. The research incorporates an ecological, interdisciplinary approach, drawing in insights from adult education, sustainable development, and ecology. Keitumetse has14 years of experience working with different communities on Adult Education programmes in Botswana, in a role that involves refining and repositioning the education programmes to better meet the needs of adult learners and to empower them in a community-based sustainable manner. He holds a Masters in Educational Leadership from the Botswana Open University (Botswana) and  Bachelor of Arts In Education from the University of Pretoria ( South Africa). 

Emma Murtagh is The Wheel's Senior EU Programmes Manager.  

Her role includes overseeing the delivery of Access Europe, a support and capacity building programme for Irish civil society organisations accessing and managing EU funding. Emma works with The Wheel’s policy team on European policy that affects civil society and creates opportunities for the sector to engage with EU decision makers. Emma also drives The Wheel’s own European development and designs projects that further the strategic goals of the organisation and support the sector overall. This means overseeing a whole host of projects in a wide variety of areas that have been made possible through EU funding. 

Emma is a qualified trainer who regularly designs and delivers sessions on a variety of topics, including funding, grant writing, partnership building, and project design.  

Patricia Wall is Programme Operations Lead, Regional Director - Great Lakes, East Africa, West Africa, & Bangladesh. Previously she has worked in Ireland setting up and managing the Training and Learning Programme for the Development Sector at the Kimmage Development Studies Centre, and for 25 years she worked in Africa including Namibia, The Gambia and Ethiopia, DRC and Cameroon in a variety of leadership roles. Patricia undertook primary research on community water resources in a rural community in Namibia as part of an MA programme in Geography and is currently undertaking further post graduate studies in Applied Social Science at UCC.

Professor Owen Worth is the Head of the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Limerick. He works, teaches and publishes in the wide areas of International Political Economy and Global Politics and has published on class, hegemony, resistance, political movement from both the right and left and on International Relations (IR) theory. He is the author of 4 books, a co-editor of a number of collections and has published in several journals throughout his career. He has also been a visiting academic at a number of universities across Europe and North America and has sat and continues to sit on the board of a number of networks and academic committees. He is the Managing Editor of the long-standing journal Capital & Class, which is published by Sage.