Prof Pat O'Connor
User profile
Professor
Pat
O'Connor
Area of expertise, interest, main activities...:
About you (please use English):
Professor Pat O’Connor is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Limerick, Ireland. She was the first woman to be appointed at (full) professorial level there in 1997. That university now has the highest proportion of women at (full) Professorial level in Ireland (31 per cent), considerably above the EU average (20 per cent). An established academic with roughly 100 publications, her most recent book is Management and Gender in Higher Education (2014). She has been researching and publishing on the topic of gender equality in universities for almost 20 years. Recent articles include those on excellence, masculinities, European Policies and Research Funding etc. She was the first woman to be appointed Faculty Dean in the University of Limerick in 2000, and was re-appointed to this management position by three Presidents. She thus brings both academic and experiential knowledge of gender equality. She is currently involved in a number of international research consortia on gender equality in higher education: including a five year cross national EU funded Framework 7 project on Female Empowerment in Science and Technology in Academia (FESTA) and a cross national study of best practice as a member of the Women in Higher Education Management Network (WHEM). She been an evaluator for the European Science Foundation; for the research programme Nordic Spaces; for the Australian Science Foundation and was Chair of the International Research Panel for Linnaeus funding in Sweden.
She has been a visiting professor at the Institute of Education in London; at the Universities of Aveiro in Portugal; The University of Linkoping in Sweden, and Deakin and Melbourne Universities in Australia and is currently a visiting professor at University Collect Dublin (UCD). She is a feminist who is deeply concerned about the negative consequences of the gender imbalances at senior levels in the universities for what is defined as valuable knowledge; for social justice; for student role models as well as for innovation in higher education. She was a member of the five person National Review of Gender Equality in Irish Higher Education Institutions (launched by Higher Educational Authority (HEA) in Dept of Education and Skills, Dublin, June, 2016)
About you (other languages):
Irish; very limited (and rusty) French
Scientific discipline:
Stakeholder group:
GenPORT Gender Expert2Expert Directory
Would you like to form part of the GenPORT Gender Expert database?:
Yes
Area of Gender Expertise:
Country coverage:
Ireland
Skills and track record:
Local PI for EU Funded Framework 7 FESTA Project (Female Empowerment in Science and Technology in Academia 2012-17) involving Sweden, Ireland, Germany, Bulgaria, Italy, Denmark and Turkey,- with over 100 publications, most of them peer reviewed.