The Globalisation, Democracy and Governance Research Group

Honor Fagan is Lecturer in Sociology and Convenor of the Globalisation, Democracy and Governance Research Group (GDGRG) at NUI Maynooth. She previously lectured at the University of Ulster, the University of Leeds and the University of Durban-Westville. She has published extensively in the areas of gender and development and globalisation and culture.

BRENDAN BARTLEY

Brendan Bartley, BA, MSc, MRUP, MCIT, MRTPI, MIPI, is a Lecturer in Urban Geography with professional qualifications in urban/regional planning and urban transportation. He is director of the Land Use and Transportation Unit (LUTU) which is based in the Department of Geography and which specialises in the preparation of socio-economic, land-use and transportation studies. He has prepared and assessed the socio-economic impacts of large scale development proposals for many urban areas in Ireland, including urban regeneration schemes, retail shopping centres, and town by-pass road projects. He recently produced socio-economic profiles for various deprived urban areas in Dublin, including Ballyfermot and North Clondalkin and has completed social surveys in North Clondalkin as a baseline for social and community network analysis in that area. He is also actively involved in a number of collaborative European research networks in the connected areas of social exclusion, urban development and urban governance.

Brendan Bartley is collaborating with Dr A. J. Saris of the Department of Anthropology, NUIM on a range of projects in Ballyfermot covering such diverse areas as local policing, life histories of drug users, and the horse protest movement. The largest of these projects - an ethnography of everyday life in two socially excluded communities - is funded by the Combat Poverty Agency and the Catherine Howard Foundation.

At an international level he has been involved in two major E.U. transportation planning research project networks (MIRO - Mobility Impact reaction and Opinions and Vade Mecum concerning the application of new telematic technologies to traffic to control commuter car traffic) with partners including Barcelona Technologia, TORG University of Newcastle upon Tyne, CIE Consult, Dublin Corporation, TFK Transportforschung, PRA Trondheim, RTM, AUTh, CETE-Mediteranee & SINTEF.

PROINNSEAS BREATHNACH

Proinnsias Breathnach is senior lecturer in the Department of Geography, with research interests in economic development, transnational investment and Ireland’s changing role in the global division of labour. His most recent work has been on the emergence of Dublin as a "niche" transnational/global city and on gender segmentation in the international division of labour in office employment, with particular reference to the call centre sector in Dublin.

Proinnsias Breathnach is currently leading up a funded research project on networking between high-tech firms in Ireland in relation to human resources practices, and has (in conjunction with the Northern Ireland Economic Research Centre) submitted a research proposal to the The Centre for Cross Border Studies to investigate the barriers to the development of a common labour market for high-technology firms in Ireland arising from the perceptions and attitudes of both company human resource managers and new entrants to the high-tech labour market. He is also developing research projects focusing on the international supply chain logistics of transnational firms operating in Ireland, and on the immigration of skilled workers in response to growing skills shortages in the Irish labour market.

COLIN COULTER

Colin Coulter lectures in the Sociology Department of the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. His academic interests include Northern Irish society and politics, cultural theory, development studies, conflict and popular music.

At present he is collaborating in research projects looking at the political implications of the growing connections between the northern and southern Irish economies, the process of social change in the Irish Republic often designated in terms of the metaphor of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ and the Orientalist motifs of contemporary theme pubs.

LAURENCE COX

Laurence Cox is lecturer in sociology at NUI Maynooth. He has been involved in transnational movements since the days of anti-apartheid and the peace movement. Since then he has been teargassed in Norway, helped run a peace camp in Germany, and been Irish delegate to the European Federation of Green Parties. Prior to working in Maynooth he was Director of the Centre for Research on Environment and Community at Waterford Institute of Technology. Recent involvements include the campaign against the SE regional incinerator, the "Ireland from Below" activist / academic workshop, and workshops for the Latin America Solidarity Centre, the Prague protest follow-up and the Convergence sustainable development fair. Academic interests include social movements, western Marxist social theory, European societies and politics and the sociology of knowledge.

ABDULLAHI EL-TOM

Abdullahi El-Tom is lecturer in the Department of Anthropology with research interests in the Anthropology of Development; Poverty, Debt and Food Security; and Minorities. His specialist knowledge of the situation in developing countries brings an important international dimension to the Globalisation and Democracy theme. He has recently (1999) published a major work: Globalization: A critical study (Dar El-Warraq, London).

Abullahi El-Tom is currently developing a research project on the question of immigration into Ireland, which has become a major source of public interest and public policy concern. Using the perspective of the theory of globalization, the research addresses recent trends of immigration as an intricate and indivisible component of a wider web of global flows which includes people, finance, media and technology. The daunting problem of immigrant integration/assimilation or cultural diversification has taken a new twist in the age of globalization. The research focus will be on how the globe has come to replace the state as the bounded space within which immigration flows take shape. Time–space shrinkage of the current world and its transformation into a single global village have made it possible for immigrants to be home and away at the same time. For example, there is evidence that some immigrant groups operate simultaneously in two separate cultural worlds: their own in-group world which is at the same time highly localised and strongly connected to their community of origin; and the broader cultural world of Irish society within which they are situated. This research aims at two primary goals: a) a better understanding of the world of immigrants in Ireland; and b) testing the theory of globalization and assessing its power in dealing with the immigration phenomenon.

JANE GRAY

Jane Gray received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1990. Her research focuses on the relationships amongst unremunerated work within the household, the division of labour by gender, and uneven patterns of regional development and class-formation. She has published comparative-historical analyses of these processes in Ireland, Scotland and Flanders.

ROB KITCHIN

Dr Rob Kitchin is a Lecturer in Human Geography. His research focuses on Social and Cultural Geography with particular interests in Geographies of Disability, Geographies of Cyberspace, Geographies of Sexuality and Cognitive Geography.