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Launch of Trinity Research in Childhood Centre (TRiCC)

TRiCC Launch Left: Professor Imelda Coyne (TRiCC Co-Director), Provost Patrick Prendergast, Professor Trevor Spratt (TRiCC Director), and Professor Eleanor Molloy (TRiCC Co-Director). Right: Provost Patrick Prendergast officially launching TRiCC.

On 17th February 2017, Trinity Research in Childhood Centre (TRiCC) was officially launched with a conference showcasing innovative and compelling interdisciplinary childhood research work at Trinity College Dublin.

Commenting at the conference, Professor in Childhood Research and co-director of the new Trinity Research in Childhood Centre, Trevor Spratt, said:

“Such complex research areas demonstrate why it is critical that we build bridges across research, policy and professional boundaries. The structures should follow the science. This challenges the way we organise universities, government departments and the professions. Trinity’s response to such challenges has been to establish the Trinity Research in Childhood Centre. Building on our history of interdisciplinary research, which was previously led by the Children’s Research Centre, the key aim of our new centre is to connect research endeavours across our schools and faculties so as to enhance our ability to undertake truly groundbreaking research with an international reach.”

Provost Patrick Prendergast got the launch underway and welcomed the establishment of TRiCC:

"With the new Centre, TRiCC, Trinity will take its strong history of interdisciplinary research to the next level - connecting up research endeavours across our schools and faculties.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the three co-directors of TRiCC – Professors Trevor Spratt, Eleanor Molloy and Imelda Coyne – who hail from the Schools of Social Work and Social Policy, Medicine, and Nursing and Midwifery. This is a genuinely cross-faculty initiative. We are hugely appreciative of the effort you have put in to getting this Centre up and running, and we have great expectations of the research that will ensue.

We know that this research will be vital. The directors of TRiCC put it succinctly:

'Almost everything we can measure in the human subject, from blood pressure, and how much we earn, to our voting behaviour is associated with our early development.'

I look forward to the great work of TRiCC." - Trinity College Dublin Provost, Dr Patrick Prendergast

The conference - Foundations for Life: Children's Research at Trinity - welcomed keynote speaker, Professor Mark Bellis, Research Director, Public Health Wales. In his presentation, ‘Building Stronger Children – Adverse Childhood Experiences and their role in health and well-being across the life-course’, Professor Bellis set out the evidence that early experience is fundamental in influencing our life chances.

In ‘Foundations for Life: Using longitudinal data to understand the influence of childhood on adult health and well-being – Growing Up in Ireland and The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing’, Professor Richard Layte, Dr Cathal McCrory and their colleagues demonstrated the unique contribution of longitudinal studies in helping us understand the relationships between early experiences and later health, social and economic outcomes.

In ‘Translational Child Psychiatry: A pathway from genes to behaviour’, Professor Louise Gallagher examined the complex interplay between genetic inheritance and social presentation.

In ‘The inscription of meaning: An interdisciplinary approach to understanding child sexual abuse’, Dr Simon McCarthy-Jones and his colleagues examined the ways in which child sexual abuse may be better understood and societal and professional developments, helpful to victims, promoted.

In ‘Disentangling facts and fictions: Girls with disabilities in West Africa’, Professor Carol Newman and her colleagues outlined economic and social science approaches to better understanding the absence of disabled girls in West Africa.