Provost & President

Dr Patrick Prendergast is the Provost and President of Trinity College Dublin. He took office in August 2011 and is the 44th Provost to be appointed since the foundation of the College by Queen Elizabeth I in 1592. Prior to that he was Vice-Provost/Chief Academic Officer and the Dean of Graduate Studies.

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Vice-Provost and Chief Academic Officer & Deputy President

Professor Linda Hogan was appointed to the role of Vice-Provost and Chief Academic Officer in September 2011. She is the senior academic officer with responsibility for the academic affairs of the university, and deputizes for the Provost as required. She is an ex officio member of the Executive Officers Group, the university’s Senior Management Team, along with the Provost, Chief Operating Officer and the Faculty Deans.

Prof Hogan is Professor of Ecumenics and a Fellow of TCD.  She is a theological ethicist with research interests in the field of social and political ethics.  She has published widely on the ethics of human rights, on intercultural ethics, and on gender. She has been the principal investigator on a number of research projects focussing on religious pluralism and inter-religious ethics. 

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Chief Operating Officer

Ms Darina Kneafsey is the Chief Operating Officer and heads College Administration and Support Services. This role entails providing strategic leadership in the overall development and management of these services to ensure alignment to the overall strategic objectives of College. The Chief Operating Officer is an ex officio member of the Executive Officers Group, the university’s Senior Management Team, along with the Provost, Vice Provost/Chief Academic Officer and the Faculty Deans. She also chairs the Senior Administration Management Team.

Ms Kneafsey has experience as a Business and Industry executive with notable achievements in the high technology industry. She has extensive senior management experience in large multi-national corporations, with a track record in operational excellence, cost leadership, change management and organisational development.

Ms Kneafsey has worked across organisations to promote diversity in the workplace. She has also set up academic relations programs. She served on external boards including Engineers Ireland and the Board of The Institute of Technology, Tallaght.

Ms Kneafsey also worked for Intel Corporation and Digital Equipment Corporation, encompassing a number of roles including Operations, Supplier and Service Management, and Product/Process Engineering. Subsequently, she founded and was a managing partner in a business working with start up and existing organisations, focussing on various sectors including education, research, transportation, tourism, software and technology.

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Dean of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences

Professor James Wickham has responsibility for the oversight of staffing, finance and strategic development in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Faculty Deans play a pivotal role in the overall academic and strategic development of the College, and are ex officio members with the Provost, Vice-Provost/Chief Academic Officer and Chief Operating Officer of the Executive Officers Group, the university’s Senior Management Team.

Prof Wickham is Professor of Sociology, a  Fellow of Trinity College and was recently awarded a Lifetime Achievement Provost's Teaching  Award.  In Trinity he has taught economic sociology and the sociology of contemporary European society.

His PhD in sociology from the University of Sussex (UK) was a social history of working class politics in Weimar Germany.  His early research in Ireland was on Irish industrialisation and labour market issues, especially the electronics industry.  In 1998 he was awarded a Jean Monnet Personal Chair in European Labour Market Studies.  Through the Employment Research Centre within TCD Department of Sociology he led EU-funded research projects on employment and work in contemporary Europe.  His research on mobility and environmental sustainability has included studies of business air travel in Ireland and of urban transport in European cities.  He has published Gridlock: Dublin's transport crisis and the future of the city (Dublin, 2006) as well as articles on European social research policy.  He chaired the Trinity Immigration Initiative and after directing a project on Polish migrants in Dublin is now leading a project which compares Polish emigration in the 2000's with Irish emigration today.

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Dean of Engineering, Mathematics & Science

Professor Clive Williams is responsible for the provision of academic and strategic leadership within the Faculty of Engineering, Mathematics and Science and as such also oversees staffing and finance matters.  Faculty Deans play a pivotal role in the overall academic and strategic development of the College, and are ex officio members with the Provost, Vice-Provost/Chief Academic Officer and Chief Operating Officer of the Executive Officers Group, the university’s Senior Management Team.

Prof Williams is a Fellow of Trinity College, and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He has published over a 100 papers on his topic of research which is currently mechanism-based therapeutic drug development.

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Dean of Health Sciences

Professor Mary McCarron took office on 01 October 2011 and has responsibility for the oversight of staffing, finance and strategic development in the Faculty of Health Sciences. Faculty Deans play a pivotal role in the overall academic and strategic development of the College, and are ex officio members with the Provost, Vice-Provost/Chief Academic Officer and Chief Operating Officer of the Executive Officers Group, the university’s Senior Management Team.

Prior to this appointment Prof McCarron served as Head of the School of Nursing & Midwifery at Trinity College which is the leading school for Nursing & Midwifery in Ireland and one of the largest schools in the University. In April 2011 Professor McCarron was elected as a Follow of Trinity College in recognition for her outstanding achievements in research and teaching and her contribution to the academic life of Trinity College.

Professor McCarron undertook her nurse training at Stewarts Hospital in Palmerstown and James Connelly Hospital in Blanchardstown, Co Dublin. She was awarded an honours degree in Nursing from Dublin City University, and was the recipient of one of the first Clinical Fellowships awarded by the Health Research Board to Nurses and Midwifes in Ireland where she undertook her PhD at Trinity College Dublin.

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Dean & Vice-President for Research

Prof Vinny Cahill was appointed Dean of Research in 2011. The Dean of Research has responsibility for coordinating and overseeing the university’s research, innovation, technology transfer, and entrepreneurship strategies.

Prof Cahill has previously served as Head of the Department of Computer Science and Director of Research for Computer Science and Statistics. He combines his role with teaching and research in the field of distributed computing systems.

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Interim Head of School of Medicine

Professor Paul Browne is the Interim Head of the School of Medicine. The Head of School is responsible for the effective general management of the School, for ensuring the provision of academic leadership and strategic vision, and for the quality of the student experience.

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Vice-President for Global Relations

Prof Jane Ohlmeyer is the Vice-President for Global Relations and has responsibility for strengthening the university's international strategies and external relationships, both national and international, to effectively deliver the College's core mission in Education and Research.

Prof Ohlmeyer is Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Modern History at Trinity College, Dublin and a member of the Royal Irish Academy.  A native of Belfast, she received her undergraduate education at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and holds her PhD in History from Trinity.  

Prior to taking up her chair at Trinity she worked in the USA (the University of Santa Barbara, California and Yale University) and in Scotland (Aberdeen University).  She has held visiting fellowships at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, the Folger Library in Washington DC and the Newberry Library in Chicago and visiting professorships at New York University and the Ecole des hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.  She has served as a Trustee of the National Library of Scotland and the Caledonian Research Foundation, was a member of the Council of the Royal Historical Society and President of the Irish Historical Society.  She is currently a Trustee and Guardian of Marsh’s Library, Dublin, a member of the Irish Manuscripts Commission, of the IRCHSS International Committee and of a number of editorial boards.
 
Professor Ohlmeyer is an expert on the New British and Atlantic Histories and has published nine books with major academic presses on a number of themes in early modern Irish and British history.  She has also written numerous articles for major international journals and peer-review anthologies.    
 
At Aberdeen and Trinity, Professor Ohlmeyer has undertaken major academic leadership roles.  She served as the founding Head of the School of Histories and Humanities, is a founding member of the Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity’s humanities research institute and in a related initiative – ‘Creativity, the City and the University’ – which is linked to the Dublin Creative Alliance. She was closely involved in setting up the ‘Humanities Serving Irish Society’ consortium which under PRTLI 4 secured funding for the Digital Humanities Observatory.  She is also the Principal Investigator for the Trinity College Dublin element of ‘Humanities Serving Irish Society’ which was awarded €10.78M as part of PRTLI 4.   

Over the years Professor Ohlmeyer has attracted significant amounts of highly competitive funding for her own research projects and for her graduate students. She has considerable expertise in overseeing major editorial projects and helped to secure over €1M in funding from the IRCHSS, the AHRC (the UK funding council) and Trinity College for the digitization and online publication of the ‘1641 Depositions’.  This is a multi-disciplinary project involving historians, geographers, computer scientists, linguists and literary scholars and a collaborative one involving Trinity and the universities of Aberdeen and Cambridge. The Depositions project is technologically innovative thanks to a close working relationship with IBM.  On the international and national stages Professor Ohlmeyer is an active proponent of ‘Digital Humanities’. She chairs the Irish Manuscripts Commission’s Digitization Taskforce and the IRCHSS-DARIAH digitization committee. She was the Irish representative on DARIAH, which has received FP7 funding for the preparatory phase, and on the European Strategic Framework for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), Humanities and Social Sciences working group which recently produced an updated roadmap.

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Bursar & Director of Strategic Innovation

Dr Gerard Lacey was appointed Bursar and Director of Strategic Innovation in 2012. This role entails providing strategic leadership in the overall development of the campus and administrative services to ensure alignment to the overall strategic objectives of College. The Bursar and Director of Strategic Innovation is an ex officio member of the Executive Officers Group, the university’s Senior Management Team, along with the Provost, Vice-Provost/Chief Academic Officer and the Faculty Deans. He is an ex officio member the Finance and Investment board committees and chair the Space Allocation and Capital Projects sub-committees of the Executive Officer Group.

Dr Gerard Lacey graduated in Computer Engineering from Trinity College Dublin in 1991.  His research spans factory automation, mobile robotics and interactive systems. In 2000, he founded a TCD spin-off company Haptica Ltd where he was CEO and subsequently CTO until 2005.  Haptica developed surgical simulation equipment for medical schools and medical device companies.  Haptica’s products won several international innovation awards including a European IST prize and the Irish Software Association Technology Innovation award.  Haptica was acquired by CAE Healthcare in 2011. 

Since his return to academia, Dr Lacey was elected a Fellow of Trinity College in 2008 and completed an MBA in 2009.  He has a track record of research commercialisation, in addition to founding Haptica he also founded GLANTA Ltd in 2010 to commercialise the SureWash hand hygiene training system and in 2012 the Wingwatch aircraft collision warning system was licensed to CMC Electronics.  In 2011, he was awarded the Enterprise Ireland ICT commercialisation award and in 2012, the Trinity College Innovation Award.

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Chief Financial Officer

Mr Ian Mathews became Chief Financial Officer in 2009 having held a number of senior positions in the finance area during his 14 years in Trinity College. He is a statutory officer of the College and a key member of the College’s senior management team, the Executive Officer Group, contributing at the highest levels of the College’s leadership structure. He is accountable to the Board and Provost for all aspects of the direction and management of the College’s financial affairs.

As CFO, Mr Mathews is charged with providing a robust financial foundation on which to construct and successfully deliver ambitious academic and corporate objectives through the development, articulation, communication and review of financial strategies. Key tasks include reporting on the financial position and performance of the College; evaluating and advising on the financial implications of proposals and plans; developing alternative financial strategies to support policy decisions; advising in regard to the financing of capital developments.

Mr Mathews qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Pricewaterhouse-Coopers in Dublin and holds a B.Comm degree as well as a Diploma in Professional Accounting. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland.

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Secretary to the College

Mr John Coman became Secretary to the College in 2012 and oversees university governance, compliance and legal matters.  He is secretary to the Board of the College and an ex officio member of a number of the College’s Principal Committees.  In addition to these core functions, he is also responsible for all aspects of the College’s communications functions as well as the College’s Equality, Irish Language and Information Compliance offices and the College Art Collections.

John previously worked as Corporate and Legal Affairs Secretary in UCD.  Prior to that John worked in Jacobs Biscuits as Assistant Company Secretary and in the Government Departments of Finance, Defence and Gaeltacht. John is a Chartered Secretary by profession and is a Member of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators. He holds an MBA from UCD as well as a Diploma in Corporate Governance.

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Director of Human Resources

Mr Tony McMahon is the Director of Human Resources and has responsibility for the development and implementation of HR strategies to support College’s strategic objectives, and the delivery of HR services.

Mr McMahon joined Trinity in April 2007 as Director of HR.  Prior to that, he worked in Teagasc, the Irish Agricultural and Food Development Authority, where he held the position of Head of Human Resources for two years. He previously worked as Director of Human Resources in the Health Services Executive (HSE) in the Eastern Region.  With a strong industrial relations background, Mr McMahon has experience of significant restructuring, and he also has a particular interest in HR business processes and information systems.

Mr McMahon holds a Bachelor of Commerce, and Masters in Business Studies from UCD and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

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