About

I am a political scientist and Teaching Assistant in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Limerick. My research interests lie in European politics, electoral behaviour, party politics and political psychology, with a particular focus on political identities, partisanship and political participation.

I completed my PhD in Politics at The University of Limerick in 2026 under the supervision of Dr. Rory Costello. My dissertation was examined by Prof. David M. Farrell (UCD) and Dr Conor Little (UL) and was passed without corrections. My doctoral research, Bringing politics back in: Causes and consequences of Positive and Negative Partisanship in Europe between 1989–2024, examines how changing patterns of political conflict and party-system polarisation shape Positive and Negative Partisanship, and how these political identities subsequently affect electoral participation.

The project draws on harmonised European Election Study data covering more than 171,000 respondents across 169 elections and 28 EU member states, linked to party- and system-level data. More broadly, my research seeks to understand how political identities and changing patterns of partisan competition affect the relationship between citizens, parties and representative democracy in contemporary Europe.

Current research

Alongside my doctoral research, I have worked on several collaborative research projects. With Prof. Jos Elkink (P.I.), I have worked on the Irish Election Studies Archive (IESA), which harmonises and preserves Irish election studies within a common data and documentation infrastructure. My work has included developing a semi-automated R and LaTeX pipeline for the harmonisation and documentation of more than 100 election-study datasets. This work has also resulted in a co-authored methodological and data-resource paper currently under review at Irish Political Studies.

I also work as a data analyst with An Coimisiún Toghcháin, the Electoral Commission, contributing to the analysis of National Election and Democracy Study data and wider electoral research. Previously, I worked with Prof. Jane Suiter at Dublin City University on the EU Horizon-funded EuComMeet project, conducting quantitative analysis of survey experiments on deliberative democracy. This work contributed to a peer-reviewed article published in Environmental Science & Policy.

Teaching

At UL, I currently lead Policy-making in the European Union (PO4117), co-convene Researching Politics (PO4103), and contribute to postgraduate teaching in Introduction to Migration Studies (MR6001). I have previously taught and convened modules in comparative European politics, EU politics, European studies, public administration and research methods.

Outside academia

Outside academia, much of my time revolves around music and sport. I am an indoor cycling instructor, choral singer, and regularly work as a Master of Ceremonies for large-scale sporting and community events.

Download my CV here.