Director
Gabriela Martínez Sainz is an Ad Astra Fellow and Assistant Professor in Education at University College Dublin researching and teaching on children’s rights, global citizenship and education for sustainable development. Her overarching research interest is understanding how key elements essential for global, plural and sustainable societies –such as sustainability, human rights and citizenship– are taught and learnt. Her latest research focuses on the teaching and learning processes of the target 4.7 of the SDGs in digital spaces to better understand the role technologies can play in education. At UCD, Gabriela is co-convener of the Rights Education Network (REN) with colleagues in the School of Education, School of Law and School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice. Gabriela is also co-founder of Child Rights Chat, a multinational project aiming at the creation of digital spaces for learning about children’s rights, their legal instruments and the challenges for their protection and promotion in practice.
Current doctoral researchers
Ashley Bough is a secondary school teacher with expertise in online learning, digital pedagogy and education technology. She completed a Professional Masters of Education at Dublin City University and a coding and computational thinking course (level 8) at Limerick IT. She is a doctoral researcher in the PhD in Education at University College Dublin exploring gender equality and girls participation in computer science and coding programmes in second level education in Ireland.
Jessica Daminelli is a doctoral researcher in the PhD candidate on Children and Youth Studies at University College Dublin, funded by the Ad Astra Scholarship. With a background in Law and Political Sociology, her ongoing research explores children and young people’s agency and political participation in social spaces. Her interests also include early childhood education, gender studies, social inclusion and international development cooperation. Over the last two years she has worked as a consultant for monitoring and evaluation of social programmes and policies focused on children, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil. She is a member of the Brazilian Monitoring and Evaluation Network Youth Group and, as a researcher, she has been affiliated to the Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP).
Visiting researchers
Olatz Aranguren Juaristi is a doctoral researcher at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) specialising in History and Teaching in Didactics. She combines her activities at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) with teaching in secondary education. She investigates the relationship between education and didactics of Social Sciences, and her main research project explores educators’ responses to address politically motivated violence in secondary schools.
Past members
Amy Hanna is lecturer in education at the University of Strathclyde. Amy is a secondary school teacher of English and taught in schools in both England and, most recently, Australia, where she taught young people with disabilities. Throughout her teaching practice, Amy noted that children’s rights and voices are regularly not asked for, and therefore remain silent, but that this is often because teachers are unaware of how to implement these rights in education. Amy completed her PhD research on how examining uses and experiences of silence by students and teachers can create more inclusive understanding and implementation of article 12 right to be heard under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Aida Urrea Monclús is an Assistant professor (Serra Hunter Fellow) at the Department of Theory of Education and Social Pedagogy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). Her research and teaching focuses on the promotion of children’s rights both in the child protection system and in the educational system.
Carmen María Caballero García is a PhD Candidate at the University of Murcia (Spain). She has obtained a pre-doctoral scholarship form the Ministry of Economy and Industry of Spain to conduct a research on inclusive education, looking at social integration of children with disabilities, as well as their rights and their agency. Her current research explores cross-cultural differences in the way children with disabilities exercise their right to active participation in the communities.
Aoife Donegan (RIP) was a primary school teacher based in Dublin. Recently, she completed a Masters in Inclusive and Special Education at Dublin City University where she received a received a First Class Honours. The culmination of this period of study combined with her professional experience confirmed her interest in the area of children’s voice, which is the focus of her doctoral research project. She was a doctoral researcher in the PhD in Children and Youth Studies at University College Dublin, collaborating in the Children’s School Lives study exploring children’s perspectives of curriculum, pedagogy and spaces for participation.
.
varieresearch.com 