Professor Kathleen Lynch

Professor Kathleen Lynch has devoted her life’s work to promoting equality, human rights, and social justice through education and research. She played the lead role in establishing the Equality Studies Centre in UCD in 1990 and the School of Social Justice in 2004/5.  She also led the development of the M.Sc. and Diploma in Equality Studies in UCD in 1990, developed several Outreach Equality Studies programmes in collaboration with Community Groups over a thirty year period, and pioneered the development of the BCL (Law and Social Justice) with the UCD Law Faculty in 2013/14.

She served on the Constitution Review Group chaired by Dr Whitaker in 1995-6, and on several advisory boards since then. She was an expert advisor to European Commission Directorate General for Education and Culture from 2007- 2010 and the principal author of the major DGEAC Report on Gender and Education (and Employment) (2009).

She has authored/co-authored several academic books, and a few hundred articles on equality issues, many of which are translated into other languages. Her new book is on Care and Capitalism; and was published by Polity Press, Cambridge in December 2021.

Kathleen has received a number of awards for her work including several research awards from the European Commission and the Irish Research Council. She was awarded the UCD Medal for Pioneering Change for promoting access for non-traditional entrants to higher education (2018) and the Irish Research Council President Higgins’ Award for promoting Equality and Participation (2019). Kathleen is a sociologist, born and raised in Co. Clare; she is married to John from Derry, and they have two children