WIIS Research Team
Professor John Geary
Principal Investigator of WIIS and Full Professor at UCD School of Business
John Geary is the Principal Investigator of WIIS and Full Professor of Employment Relations at the School of Business, University College Dublin and Honorary Professor at the Marco Biagi Foundation, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy. John obtained his doctorate at Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
Dr Maria Belizón
Assistant Professor of Human Resource Management and Employment Relations at ICADE – Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Madrid and Research Fellow at University College Dublin
María is Assistant Professor of Human Resource Management and Employment Relations at ICADE, Universidad Pontificia Comillas (Spain) since 2023. From 2015 to 2023, she was Assistant Professor of HRM at University College Dublin (Ireland). She holds a Ph.D. in Management and an MSc in International Management and Global Business from the University of Limerick (Ireland). Her core research and teaching focus on HR analytics, international HRM/industrial relations in multinational companies (MNCs), and job quality. She is Academic Lead for the HR Analytics Think Tank, a private-academic partnership based in London, and she also serves as external examiner for HRM modules at TU Dublin (Ireland). She is currently involved in the Working in Ireland Survey (WIIS) 2021 project led by Prof. John Geary in UCD and is researching the role of continuous improvement and analytics in the global transformation of HR with UCD colleague Dr Linda Dowling-Hetherington.
Dr Lisa Wilson
Senior Economist at the Nevin Economic Research Institute (NERI)
Dr Lisa Wilson is Senior Economist at the Nevin Economic Research Institute (NERI) and is
based in the Belfast office. Her main research interests lie in the areas of labour markets, job
quality, income distribution, poverty, public expenditure, and living standards. Lisa is a
graduate of both Ulster University and Queen’s University and holds a PhD from Queen’s
University, Belfast which focused on income inequality and well-being. Lisa currently also
serves as a member of the Northern Ireland Productivity Forum, Northern Irelands Women’s
Budget Group and ReWage, a UK expert advisory group on work, employment, and labour
markets. Most recently Lisa served as a member of the Independent Fiscal Commission,
which reviewed the case for devolving further taxation powers.
Paul MacFlynn
Co-director of the Nevin Economic Research Institute
Paul Mac Flynn is co-director of the Nevin Economic Research Institute and is based in the Belfast office. In addition to managing the Belfast office he has co-responsibility for the NERI's research programme and for its strategic direction. He leads on the NERI’s analysis of the Northern Ireland economy along with all research into the impact of the United Kingdom‘s departure from the European Union. Other research areas include regional productivity, the all-island economy and the future of work. He is a graduate of University College Dublin with a BA in Economics and Politics and the University of Bristol with an MSc in Economics and Public Policy, specialising in the economic impacts of political devolution in the UK.
Past Members of WIIS Team
Dr Patrick Gallagher
Postdoctoral researcher member of the UCD Working in Ireland Survey team
Dr Patrick Gallagher is a member of the UCD Working in Ireland Survey team. He is also a postdoctoral researcher working on the HECAT team at Waterford Institute of Technology. HECAT is a European consortium bringing together leading experts in unemployment and data science to develop and pilot a disruptive technology to support labour market decision making. Dr Gallagher's expertise ranges from higher-level macro-economic and social models to public policy, particularly public employment service, industrial relations and working conditions, combined with experience working and lecturing in sociology, social policy, and criminology. In 2018, Patrick completed his PhD thesis titled Financialisation and the politics of growth in Denmark and Ireland at Maynooth University while working on the ERC funded project New Deals in the New Economy, investigating the changing nature of workplace bargains across Europe.
Mr Ciarán Nugent
Doctoral candidate and research member of the UCD Working in Ireland Survey team
Ciarán Nugent is an economist at the Nevin Economic Research Institute. He is a PhD candidate with the Department of Sociology in Maynooth University where he is researching social mobility, skills mismatch and returns to education. Ciarán also lectures in the Political Economy of the Welfare State for the Department of Applied Social Studies in Maynooth and is a director with GEMS NI. He graduated with an MA in Economics and BA in International Politics from NUI Maynooth.
Advisory Panel
The UCD Working in Ireland Survey team is grateful for the advice and support provided by its Advisory Panel members. They include:
Professor Alan Felstead
Alan Felstead is Research Professor in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. Alan has held positions at Nuffield College, University of Oxford and the University of Leicester. He obtained his PhD from Imperial College, University of London, his Master's from the University of Warwick and his primary degree from the University of Cambridge. He enjoys an international reputation for his research on the quality of work; training, skills and learning; non-standard employment; and the spaces and places of work. He has given written and oral evidence to inquiries on labour market issues carried out, for example, by the Department of Work and Pensions Select Committee, the House of Lords, the Cabinet Office, the Scottish Parliament and Senedd Cymru/Welsh Parliament. He was appointed a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences (FAcSS) in 2011 and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (FLSW) in 2013. He is also a Senior Member of the ESRC's Peer Review College and a member of the ESRC-supported Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD). In 2018-2019 he sat on the Welsh Government's Fair Work Commission as the Independent Expert Advisor and during 2019-2020 he was on part-time secondment to the Welsh Government.
Dr Patrick McGovern
Patrick McGovern is an Associate Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He specialises in two areas of research: economic sociology and international migration. Pat holds a doctorate from Oxford University and First Class degrees in Sociology (BSc) and Industrial Relations (MSc) from University College, Dublin. He has served on the editorial boards of the British Journal of Industrial Relations, The British Journal of Sociology and Work, Employment & Society. He is the author of Market, Class, and Employment (with Stephen Hill, Colin Mills, and Michael White). Oxford University Press.
Dr Tom McDonnell
Tom McDonnell is Co-Director of the Nevin Economic Research Institute. Tom previously worked as an economist at TASC and before that was a lecturer in economics at NUI Galway and at DCU. He is currently an occasional staff member at Maynooth University. Tom obtained his PhD in economics from NUI Galway.
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