Rebekah Brennan is employed as a postdoctoral researcher on the Voluntary Care in Ireland project in the School of Applied Social Studies/School of Law. Her current research is focused on the strengths and weaknesses of the voluntary care system in Ireland and how it can be reformed to better protect children and families.  

Rebekah’s research interests include child care, substance use and misuse, drug sociology, risk and health. She enjoys using qualitative methods to explore areas which relate to vulnerable groups and how to better protect and empower individuals. Rebekah’s PhD “An ethnopharmacological study on injecting use of performance and image enhancing drugs (PIED)” was funded by an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship award, and used an online research methodology to compare concepts of stigmatisation and identity in injecting PIED use with injecting psychoactive drug use.