Dr Noel O'Connell is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Science in the 21st Century (ISS21) and the School of Applied Social Studies, UCC.

Noel graduated with a BA in English Literature from University of Ulster (2002), MSc in Literature: Writing and Cultural Politics from University of Edinburgh (2005), MPhil in Deaf Studies from University of Bristol (2008) and PhD in Deaf Education from Mary Immaculate College (2013). Prior to joining UCC this year, he worked as Postdoctoral Research Associate at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, (Jan 2015-Sept 2015) as part of the UK AHRC grant awarded to Professor Jemina Napier (Heriot Watt University) and Professor Alys Young (University of Manchester). Noel also occupied a Postdoctoral Researcher position (2022) at the School of Applied Social Studies, UCC where he worked under the direction of Dr Gill Harold (Principal Investigator) who was awarded funding the Irish Research Council under the New Foundations scheme for her project entitled  “ISL-health: Ensuring access provision to public health services for the Irish deaf community.”

Noel was awarded the GOI Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship (2015) to publish doctoral research findings and a grant from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (2022) to conduct research on deaf people's experience of ableism and employment discrimination in collaboration with Irish Deaf Society. Author of over 20 publications, he is the recipient of the DOROTHY COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie award from the Irish Research Council for a project focusing on deaf people's experience of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland and the UK (2023).

His main research interests include deaf life stories, sociology, education, social justice, human rights, identity politics, children and childhood, deaf studies, privilege studies and disability issues.