Research Assistants
Brían Merriman
Brían is working with Dr Lorraine Swords on Family Well-being in Difficult Times, a project to develop a model of factors influencing the well-being of families on limited incomes in Ireland. The study is funded by the Family Support Agency through the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. It will use secondary analysis of data from Wave 1 of the Growing Up in Ireland Child Cohort to test a theoretical model of family well-being.
Until recently, Brían worked as a research fellow on Growing Up in Ireland and previously at the Child and Family Research Centre, NUI Galway. He holds BA and MLitt degrees in psychology from UCD and will shortly complete a PhD at NUI Galway on child-centred research methods. Brían also works at the Centre for Talented Youth, Ireland and for Accuracy Research.
Marita Hennessy
Marita is working as a Research Assistant with Dr Michelle Share on a safefood-funded study that will examine the nutrition education needs of young people in early school leaver (ESL) settings on the island of Ireland.
She holds a MA in Health Education and Health Promotion from the University of Limerick (2008) and a BSc (Hons) in Nutrition from University College Cork (2001).
Previously, Marita was a Research Fellow at University College Cork where she had lead responsibility for projects in the areas of food poverty and obesity.
Marita is a member of the Association for Health Promotion in Ireland, the Community Workers Cooperative and the Nutrition Society.
Marita’s MA thesis, titled 'Men’s health help seeking: an exploratory study’ investigated the factors that men take into account when assessing their health status; the criteria that men use to decide whether or not to seek formal health care and the factors that inform men’s perception of what constitutes an acceptable threshold for seeking help with health issues.
Sandra McCarthy
Sandra holds an MA in Globalisation Studies from DCU and an HDip (Hons) in Social Policy from UCD. She is a recent graduate from the MA in Applied Social Research at Trinity College Dublin where she completed a thesis entitled “The Educational Outcomes of Young People in Care in Ireland: A Mixed Methods Approach”. Sandra also worked as a Policy and Research Intern with One Family working on the development of a new study relating to family formation in Ireland today. She is currently working as a Research Assistant to Dr. Michelle Share on the evaluation of the Early Learning Initiative (ELI) funded by the National College of Ireland.
Sarah Sheridan
Sarah Sheridan obtained her Arts (International) degree in 2006 from NUI Galway where she studied human geography and Spanish. She then pursued a multi-disciplinarily MA entitled ‘Globalisation, Ethnicity and Culture’ in the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies in the University of Sussex. From October 2008 until September 2009, she undertook a research internship at the Immigrant Council of Ireland. During this time she was the principal researcher for the Pathways to Parental Leadership project; which sought to develop an increased knowledge base of barriers and facilitators in the integration of migrant parents and students in the Irish school system.
She is currently working as a research assistant to Dr Paula Mayock on a new IRCHSS-funded study of women and homelessness in Ireland.