Our Team

Kieran Walsh is Professor of Ageing & Public Policy and Director of the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology (ICSG), National University of Ireland Galway. Kieran has extensive experience in ageing and public policy and interdisciplinary social gerontology research and has published extensively within the field of ageing. Before taking up the role of Director of the ICSG, he served as Project Director of Project Lifecourse within the Institute for Lifecourse and Society, a €1.5 million three-year programme of work dedicated to capturing the subjective realities of children and youth, older people and people with disabilities in their neighbourhoods and communities. With a track record of working closely with senior levels of public policy and professional practice, Kieran is focused on translating research into real-world impact and integrating this experience in the design of impactful research and teaching programmes. He has played a leading role in the development of international multi-site and interdisciplinary research studies. Kieran’s research interests and expertise focus on: social exclusion in later life; the relative nature of disadvantage in cross-national contexts; place and life-course transitions; and informal and formal infrastructures of care. Kieran is also Chair of the European COST Action CA15122 on ‘Reducing Old-Age Social Exclusion’ (ROSEnet – www.rosenetcost.com), which has over 180 members from 41 different countries. With objectives that address critical gaps in research, policy, and international interdisciplinary research capacity, ROSEnet aims to overcome fragmentation in conceptual innovation on old-age exclusion across the life course, in order to address the research-policy disconnect and tackle social exclusion amongst older people.

Dr. Áine Ní Léime is Deputy Director of the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology. She has a PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from the University of Dublin, Trinity College. She is currently P.I. for the Irish strand of an EU (NORFACE) funded cross-national project, Dynamics of Accumulated Inequalities for Seniors in Employment (DAISIE) running from 2018-2021 involving colleagues from the Cech Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. While her recent research focuses on gender, employment, pensions and older workers, she has research expertise in creativity and ageing, leisure, volunteering and ageing.  She completed a Marie Sklodowska Curie International Outgoing  Fellowship (2015 – 2018) spending two years in Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (mentor Professor Dale Dannefer) and a final year at NUI Galway. She was PI of this EU-funded cross-national study entitled Gender, Older Workers and the Lifecourse (GENDOWL) – a comparative, qualitative study on gender and extended working life using an innovative life-course approach. She was Chairperson of COST Action IS1409 a research network: Gender, Health and the impact of Extended Working Life Policies in Western Countries for which she was the main proposer. The COST Action ran from April 2015 to April, 2019.