Dr James Cuffe - Principal Investigator

James is an anthropologist and IRC Laureate working generally in the field of techno-anthropology drawing upon philosophical traditions drawn through ethnographic fieldwork. His previous work includes ethnographic research in Shanghai on the effects of mediative technologies in social change published as a monograph with Routledge (China at the Threshold, 2021). He is co-director of the Atlantic Anthropological Spring School held annually in Dingle, Ireland.   

Dr Sarah O'Connell - Innovation Manager

Sarah is a Chartered Engineer with over 20 years’ experience in energy in buildings, building to grid technologies, energy flexibility & demand response. She completed her PhD with the University of Galway on building to grid energy flexibility and holds a Research Masters in ground source heat pump technology from CIT/MTU. O’Connell has worked both as a consulting engineer, designing systems for buildings (specialising in energy efficiency and sustainability) and in research demonstration projects in real buildings and sites. During her 8 years at UTRC, the research centre of a $60bn US Multinational, she led test bed projects on whole building power & energy management scaling from single building to district while also delivering EU projects, including the H2020 Energy Local Storage Advanced System (ELSA). She also worked as a Statistician in the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and has experience of data management for construction and business data. She is currently the Research & Innovation Manager in the College of Science, Engineering and Food Science.

Dr Nasrin Khandoker - Post-Doctoral Researcher

Nasrin is a Post-doc researcher in the CyberSocial project. She received her PhD in Anthropology from Maynooth University and has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Limerick and Galway University. She was an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Jahangirnagar University. Her research interests are gender and sexuality, Bangla folk song, migration, gender-based violence, emotion and affect, embodiment and post-colonial critiques. 

Dr Mórna O'Connor - Post-Doctoral Researcher

Mórna is a grief and bereavement scholar specialising in digital-age contexts of mourning. She holds a BA in Applied Psychology (UCC), a certificate in Grief and Bereavement Counselling (Institute of Counselling, Glasgow), and a PhD in Health Science (University of Nottingham, UK), and recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Aarhus University, Denmark, on the EU CHANSE-funded project, Digital Death: Transforming History, Ritual and Afterlife. Mórna’s predominantly qualitative research explores how grief intersects with digital culture, including the role of digital remains in grieving, the privatisation and secularisation of grief support through technologies, and the emerging Digital Afterlife Industry, which commercially offers simulations of the dead to the bereaved. Broadly, Mórna’s work critically examines how grief is conceptualised, commodified, and monetised within contemporary commercial and surveillance-capitalist digital environments.

Dr Chiara Magliacane - Post-Doctoral Researcher

Chiara is a Postdoctoral Researcher at University College Cork, working on the TEASA project at the CyberSocial Research Lab. She received her ESRC-funded PhD from Queen’s University Belfast in 2022. She subsequently held an ESRC-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the same university (2022-2023). In 2023, she won an ESRC Impact Acceleration Account award to undertake a research project with high schools in Rome. She then worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher on the ERC-funded F-Word project at the University of Turin (2024-2026). Between 2022 and 2025, she held Visiting Researcher positions at Leiden University, Queen’s University Belfast, and Tulane University. Since 2013, she has done ethnographic fieldwork in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Italy, and Mexico. She is a medical and political anthropologist whose research focuses on political and everyday violence, trauma, social inequality, the lived experiences of conflict and its aftermath, and the impact of technology on social life.

Dr Iris Maher - Project Manager

Iris is a design anthropologist. She completed her PhD in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University. During her doctoral research, she collaborated with a non-profit organisation, Mobility and Accessibility for Children (MACA), to investigate Australian families’ experiences of child car seats and special-purpose restraints. In her thesis, she explored the uncertainty faced by parents when met with organisational and institutional barriers to funding and sanctioning the use of these devices necessary for their everyday travel. 

Dr Felix Rolt - Post-Doctoral Researcher and Part-Time Lecturer

Felix is an anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher working on the TEASA project at the CyberSocial Research Lab. He also teaches on the Anthropology courses and gives lectures in the Department of Sociology & Criminology. He received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Oxford. His doctoral research was based on fieldwork in Port Harcourt, a city in south-eastern Nigeria.

Nathan Barr - MA Researcher

Nathan is an Energy Engineering graduate specialising in building energy services. He is current MA student at UCC and a member of the engineering team on the COALESCE project.

Tuona Wen - PhD Researcher

Matthew Perry - PhD Researcher

Matthew is a PhD student in Anthropology at UCC. He earned degrees in Anthropology and Law from the University of Michigan between 1993 and 2001. Since then, he has taught Maths, English, History, Government, and Economics to primary and secondary students in the U.S., while also pursuing side projects in oral history, game design, and educational app development. His research focuses on deliberative democracy, with an emphasis on Citizens’ Assemblies modelled on the Irish examples of the past 15 years. He will be co-organising logistics for the Atlantic Anthropological Workshop held in Dingle in April 2027.

Advisory Board

The project is supported by academics and policy experts as well as practicioners that can provide expertise across a range of domains. The board is available on an ad hoc / as needed basis to engage with different aspects of the project relevant to their areas of expertise. We are currently populating the board so stay tuned to see developments here.

Prof. Luigina Ciolfi - Human Computer interaction

Dr. James Kapalo - Religious and Ethnic Minorities

Dr. Jolynna Sinanan - Digital Anthropology

Ms Claire Davis - Digital Officer, Cork City Council

Ms Colette Cronin - ICT Compliance Lead, Cork City Council.