Projects & Outputs

The DICES project seeks to unlock the potential of the social economy to foster social inclusion and provide access to high quality care and care work. A key objective will be to assess and make policy recommendations to strengthen working conditions in the social economy and best practice care organisations will be identified and strategies to scale these will be developed. The project will have practical outcomes, such as the piloting of innovative care organisations and initiatives co-designed with key stakeholders. 

Funded through Horizon Europe, the DICES project will focus on optimising the potential of Europe’s social economy organisations to enhance social inclusion at both the local level, particularly in 'left behind places,' and within organisations, with a specific emphasis on care provision.

Find out more about DICES

HIA-IM

This project aims to strengthen intersectoral policy and practice in tackling health inequalities through the development of an enhanced health impact assessment (HIA) implementation model. Specifically, the implementation model will be developed by taking an action research methodological approach to the conduct of two HIAs in Ireland – one at a local policy level, addressing the Cork City Development Plan, and a second at a national policy level, addressing the Irish Government’s Climate Action Plan. A key component of the HIA implementation model will be a Community Engagement Toolkit to facilitate meaningful community engagement in the conduct of HIAs.

Find out more about HIA-IM

SPRING

Based on a participatory and strengths-based approach, the primary aim of this project is to improve knowledge at secondary school age level of issues in relation to fertility difficulties and pregnancy loss, including miscarriage and stillbirth. These are issues that will affect many of these students directly/indirectly during their lives.

Find out more at: https://www.ucc.ie/en/pregnancyloss/researchprojects/spring/# 

CareVisions

CareVisions is an interdisciplinary research project reflecting on care experiences during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic in order to re-imagine future care relations, practices and policies in Ireland and internationally. Working with caregivers, care receivers, practitioners and policymakers, we aim to advance knowledge about the meaning of care in people's lives, and stimulate critical public debate about how we can envision alternative care futures.

Find out more about CareVisions

EUROBORDERWALKS

Working collaboratively in interdisciplinary ways across sociology, biographical sociology and arts practice (ethno-mimesis), the aim of this project is to open up horizons and opportunities for scholarship and produce knowledge and understanding of the problems and challenges associated with the three borders (Croatia/Bosnia-Herzegovina, Poland/Ukraine, NI/RoI) at the edges of the European Union, and the very meaning, experience and practices of borders. An important contribution of this research is to open up horizons for research, knowledge, understanding and teaching and learning, from an ‘ethno-mimetic’ approach (a combination of ethnographic, biographical and arts based research) that involves documenting and writing the biography of three borders ‘from below’ as well as to impact on policy, through a policy report, policy briefing, exhibition and a curriculum contribution to second level sociological education.

Find out more about EUROBORDERWALKS 

PRECNIGHTS

PRECNIGHTS is an ambitious anthropological project on labour migration and precarity, focusing on the essential, yet invisible, women migrant night workers (WMN) in Ireland. Through an innovative interdisciplinary and ethnographic approach, the research will impact scholarly debates on migration, and will inform key Irish and European stakeholders on migrant workers’ rights.

Find out more about PRECNIGHTS

RE:CURRENT

The RE:CURRENT project evaluated recurrent miscarriage services in Ireland to inform efforts to standardise and improve the quality of these services.

Find out more at: RE:CURRENT | University College Cork

Building Environmental Sustainability:

This research seeks to understand how credit unions view their strategic role in supporting the environment and mitigating against climate change and explores the extent to which credit unions, in orientation, design and action, can act as enablers of place-based regeneration and climate leadership through wider collaboration.

• Co-PIs: Dr Olive McCarthy and Dr Noreen Byrne
• Funded by the Swoboda Research Centre
• Project dates: December 2023 - September 2024

ACCEPT

The Core of the ACCEPT project is the concept of “energy communities” with the collective approach to bring citizens, local businesses and organizations together, to produce and consume locally generated, renewable energy. The EU-funded project intends to develop and deliver a digital toolbox, that allows such energy communities to offer innovative digital services to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels, save energy in the users households and thus be able to reduce their electricity bill without compromising the quality of living, but ideally increasing the comfort in their homes through smart devices. In ACCEPT, these developed tools will be demonstrated and validated in four pilot sites in Greece, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland involving more than 3.000 people and 750 residences.

Find out more about ACCEPT

SHiFT

SHiFT aims to address the challenge of generating innovative and actionable pathways by engaging with the ‘critical practice’ dimensions of transformation. A ‘critical practice’ approach explores transformation processes in practice across different dimensions which include research, policy, business, community and individual practices.

Mission

• Raising awareness to Climate Change societal transition and transformation;
• Minimising the impact of Climate Change in our lives and communities;
• Redirecting a wide variety of actors towards sustainability through the Arts and Social Sciences and Humanities;
• Expanding the universe of artists and researchers to focus on Climate Change;
• Generating innovative and actionable pathways by engaging with the ‘critical practice’ dimensions of transformation.

Find out more about SHiFT

DStream

The overall objective of DStream is to investigate the role of practices in enabling the emergence of pro-environmental and regenerative and experimental mindsets amongst Irish dairy farmers. The vision of DStream is to provide a strong evidence base for action towards an enabling context for a more sustainable production system in Irish dairy.

• PI: Dr. Noreen Byrne,
• Co-PIs: Dr Olive McCarthy and Professor Ciara Heavin
• Funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• Project dates: March 2024 until March 2028.

INSPIRE

Representative democracy is undergoing a deep crisis of legitimacy. Climate assemblies, participatory budgeting, and civic tech are examples of democratic innovations that connect the voices of everyday people to decision-makers (Smith 2009; Geißel and Newton 2012; Elstub and Escobar 2019). On the one hand, these participatory and deliberative democracy (PDD) processes are celebrated for their potential in addressing political distrust and polarisation by deepening public engagement. On the other hand, they are accused of being cosmetic solutions to deep-seated problems that continue to exclude already disempowered groups (along socioeconomic, gender, racial, physical, and mental ability lines).

INSPIRE sets out to tackle these issues and failures by creating participatory spaces that are: inclusive, starting from the needs and assets of marginalised groups; resilient to changes in government and developing upon existing grassroots work to support community resilience; and adaptively embedded within the wider public sphere and in productive relationships with policymaking institutions.

Find out more about INSPIRE

This study looks at how critical thinking can be an effective method to reduce people's tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. Find out more at: https://www.ucc.ie/en/research/news/2025/critical-thinking-training-can-reduce-belief-in-conspiracy-theories.html