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Noah Halpin is a 30 year old transgender man from North County Dublin.
Noah is the Community Healthcare Officer at The Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI) and is also the founder of the This Is Me-Transgender Healthcare Campaign. Noah both in a personal and professional copassity advocates for safe, accessible, best practice, person centred healthcare for all transgender and non-binary people in Ireland.
He is also an active member of ACT UP Dublin and is passionate about the improvement of sexual health services nationwide as well as ending the HIV crisis in Ireland. Noah directly supports the transgender community as they experience their journey of gender affirming healthcare. This may include hormone treatment, gender affirming surgeries and mental health support.
He lives by the saying “Be the person you needed when you were younger.
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CEO Inclusion Ireland
With over 20 years experience supporting people with intellectual disabilities, Derval is passionate about inclusion, belonging and valuing people. She commenced her career as a speech and language therapist, graduating from Trinity in 1999 and although she has not practiced in some time, she brings with her an appreciation of the power of communication and the right to accessible information for people with disabilities.
Having taken on the role of Chief Executive at Inclusion Ireland in September 2021, Derval is fully committed to working in partnership with people towards a more inclusive Ireland where people can have their fundamental rights met as equal and valued citizens.
She believes that everyone has a voice, but we need to understand how to listen.
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Dr Noreen Giffney is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and a psychosocial theorist. She is the author of the book, The Culture-Breast in Psychoanalysis: Cultural Experiences and the Clinic (Routledge 2021), and the author and/or editor of a number of articles and books on psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies, and theories of gender and sexuality.
She is particularly interested in how we engage emotionally with cultural objects (film, art, literature, music) and what happens in our minds unconsciously when we do. Noreen is the Director of ‘Psychoanalysis +’, an international, interdisciplinary initiative that brings together clinical, academic and artistic approaches to, and applications of, psychoanalysis.
She lives in County Donegal, and is a Lecturer in Counselling at Ulster University in Belfast.
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Dr Claire Kilty has a research background in Genetics, having undertaken a degree and PhD in the Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin. Following on from this, she undertook a post-doctoral fellowship at University College Dublin where she was evaluating novel drugs to treat a common form of blindness. Since 2015, Claire has managed numerous large-scale national and international cancer research programmes.
Notably, she previously managed the Irish Cancer Society’s first Collaborative Cancer Centre, BREAST-PREDICT from 2015 to 2017. Claire joined the Irish Cancer Society as Research Manager in May 2018, where she works with the research team to manage the Irish Cancer Society research funding portfolio, implement cancer research strategy, and communicate to the public about the research funded by the Society as well as the latest cancer research developments.
She is extremely passionate about ensuring that the Patient Voice is at the heart of cancer research, and is currently working to embed patients and the public into the Irish Cancer Society’s research funding processes.
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Dr Gemma Irvine is currently Vice-President for Equality & Diversity in Maynooth University with responsibility for leading strategic change in the areas of equality, diversity, inclusion and inter-culturalism across the entire University community, students and staff. Dr Irvine also has oversight of the expansion and enhancement of access and widening participation programmes to ensure the University is inclusive for all students.
Previously as Head of Policy and Strategic Planning in the Higher Education Authority (HEA), Dr Irvine coordinated a national approach to the development and implementation of policy for higher education, with specific responsibility for the enhancement of teaching and learning, research including open science, international education and equality, diversity and inclusion. Dr Irvine led the secretariat for the Irish National Review of Gender Equality in Irish Higher Education Institutions, 2016 and the Gender Equality Taskforce, 2018.
Dr Irvine is the Irish National Delegate for the ERAC Standing Working Group for Gender in Research and Innovation (ERAC SWG GRI) and previously was the Irish Delegate for the ‘European Universities Network’ initiative, for SSH in H2020 and for Research Infrastructures in the FP7 EU Programme. In 2012, Dr Irvine coordinated the operational merger of the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) and the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) into the Irish Research Council (IRC), becoming the Assistant Director of the IRC.
Dr Irvine was responsible for coordinating the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI) when she first moved into the HEA in 2007. Prior to that Dr Irvine completed her Masters and PhD in Neuroscience in New Zealand before coming to Ireland in 2004 to work as a Research Fellow in Trinity College Dublin.
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Dr. Amanda McCann PhD, is a Principal Investigator and Senior Conway Fellow in the UCD Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research in University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland.
She is also Professor in the UCD School of Medicine and was Head of Pathology within the School from 2015-2018. Her group’s specific cancer research interests are focused on understanding the mechanisms underlying chemoresistance for women presenting with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) including comparative oncology approaches. In this regard she has published extensively in the area of cancer cell senescence and the role of extracellular vesicles/exosomes in the chemoresistant phenotype. She was also a member of the founding committee in the establishment of the International Cellular Senescence Association (ICSA).
In 2017, Amanda established the UCD Centre in Translational Oncology (UCTO) with an official launch in September 2018. In 2016, she established and currently chairs the UCD Patient Voice in Cancer Research (PVCR) committee made up of patients, researchers and health care professionals, that aims to engage the general public and cancer survivors in cancer research ensuring a two-way dialogue between patients and researchers. In December 2019, she was awarded a VIA (Values in Action) award for her work in this regard. Within UCD, Amanda has been on an expert panel for the Rapid Realist Review (RRR) detailing the mechanisms that enable the reciprocal involvement of seldom heard groups in health and social care.
This initiative is funded through a HRB Ignite award, where UCD in collaboration with 10 partner organisations is developing a network and resource platform to firmly embed patient and public involvement (PPI) in UCD’s research learning and teaching activities. In relation to patient advocate groups, she previously was a Co-Director of IPPOSI and research advisor to Debra Ireland. In 2017, Amanda was elected President of the Irish Association for Cancer Research (IACR), and has led on patient involvement with cancer researchers across Ireland as part of the annual IACR conferences.
As President of the IACR, she represented the association on the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) National Societies Committee (2018) and was previously Honorary Secretary of the IACR 1998-2000.
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Prof Gerardine Meaney is Professor of Cultural Theory and Director of the Centre for Cultural Analytics in the School of English, Drama and Film at UCD. She is the author of Gender, Ireland and Cultural Change (Routledge, 2010), Nora (Cork University Press, 2004), (Un)like Subjects: Women, Theory, Fiction (Routledge, 1993, 2012), and a broad range of articles and book chapters on gender and culture. She co-wrote, with Mary O’Dowd and Bernadette Whelan, Reading the Irish Woman: Studies in Cultural Encounters and Exchange, 1714-1960 (Liverpool University Press, 2013) and was one of the major co-editors of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing: Women’s Writing and Traditions, volumes 4 and 5 (2002).
She was awarded a European Research Council Advanced Investigator award in 2020 for her project on European Migrants and the British Imagination: Victorian and Neo-Victorian Culture (VICTEUR).
Previous projects include Nation, Gender and Genre: Social Network Analysis and Fiction, Contagion: Biopolitics and Cultural Memory, and a centenary multimedia exploration ofA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. She is also a breast cancer survivor.
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Dr. Brenda O’Connell is the research assistant on Mamecology. She is an adjunct at Maynooth University, tutoring in the English department. Her research interests include ageing, gender and sexuality, motherhood, performance art, psychoanalysis and Irish theatre. She has published on Samuel Beckett and the ageing feminine, and on Beckett and performance art.
Brenda has recently published essays in Beckett and Politics (Palgrave 2021), Women and the Decade of Commemorations (Indiana UP 2021) and The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights, 1716-2016, Volume 2 (19992-2016) (Liverpool UP 2021). She is currently writing a chapter for a forthcoming edited collection, Ageing Masculinities in Irish Literature and Visual Culture (Routledge Studies in Irish Literature Series) and she is also working on her monograph “Motherhood, Female Ageing and Samuel Beckett”.
More important than any of the above achievements, Brenda is a survivor of breast cancer, twice. She considers this her greatest achievement so far, and is fiercely passionate about life, love and literature.
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Andrea Ryder is a Communications, Public Affairs and Marketing professional currently managerial head of Communications, Policy and Public affairs at the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland. A Communications, Public Affairs and Marketing professional her career spans roles in the Health (Mental Health) sector, Ireland and in various sectors of the automotive industry and motor business in the UK, Germany and Ireland.
Andrea holds a BBS (Bachelor of Business Studies) from Trinity College (the University of Dublin), a Graduate Diploma in Media Studies from DIT(Dublin Institute of Technology), a BA (Psychology) from DBS (Dublin Business School) and more recently completed a Diploma in Organisational Development and Transformation with the IMI, Dublin.
Andrea is a lone parent (due to bereavement) to two fantastic inspirational young teenagers and has lived experience of breast cancer and all the difficulties, learning and inspiration that have come with it through individual and collective survival. People and connections, music and travelling are and have been her predominate passions as well as any activity on, in or beside the sea. She recently took up Kayaking!
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Dr Maria Stuart is assistant professor in the School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin, where her teaching and research are in the areas of American literature, crime fiction, and the medical humanities (with particular interest in dysfluency studies, an interdisciplinary approach to stammering encompassing cultural representation, clinical practice and creative expression).
She is co-editor (with Fionnuala Dillane and Fionnghuala Sweeney) of Ireland, Slavery, Anti-Slavery and Empire (Routledge, 2018) and author of ‘The poetics of dysfluency: Emerson and Dickinson’ in Maintaining a Place: Conditions of Metaphor in Modern American Literature (UCD Press, 2014) and ‘“Easy listening”: Altered auditory feedback and dysfluent speech’, Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies, 4:1 (2019).
She is co-editor with Daniel Martin of a special issue of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies on dysfluency 5:2 (2021) and principal investigator for the Wellcome-funded project ‘Metaphoric Stammers and Embodied Speakers’: Connecting Clinical, Cultural and Creative Practice in the area of Dysfluent Speech. Current research is focused on narrative practice, literary voice and dysfluency.
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Dr Moynagh Sullivan (she/her) is the Principal Investigator (PI) on Mamecology.
Moynagh is survivor of breast cancer for whom reconnecting with colour, beauty, and nature through creative practice was key to her emotional management of the diagnosis. Her aim with Mamecology is to honour the creative work of others who have faced or witnessed breast cancer, and to provide a repository of art and beauty for those going through it.
She is Associate Professor in English at Maynooth University, where she is also Associate Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. As the parent and primary resident carer of a beloved adult child with an intellectual disability, inclusion is a matter dear to her heart.
Her research focuses on motherhood, gender and sexuality in Irish culture from a variety of psychoanalytical perspectives. She has published widely in these fields, with a particular attention to neglected women writers, excavating them from historical loss, exemplified by her recent essay, ‘Rematriating Mid-Century Modernism: Carla Lanyon Lanyon’, in The Cambridge History of Irish Women Poets, ed. Ailbhe D’Arcy and David Wheatley (July 2021).
She was awarded the inaugural Department of Foreign Affairs Fulbright Fellowship In Irish Studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 2009, and a Visiting Professorship in Irish Studies at Boston College in 2021. Moynagh is also a continuing education (CEAD) student at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) where she hopes to complete a degree in Fine Art.
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Professor Janice Walshe, Consultant Medical Oncologist, St Vincent’s University Hospital, Ireland.
Janice Walshe, MD is a Clinical Professor in Medical Oncology specialising in breast cancer in St Vincent’s University Hospital, Ireland. She earned her medical degree from National University of Ireland, Galway in 1997 and completed her specialist training in the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Dublin while gaining a masters in Molecular Medicine at Trinity College, Dublin.
She completed her Fellowship in the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland where her focus was novel approaches in Her-2 positive locally advanced and metastatic breast cancer. She returned to Ireland in 2006 where she is a member of Cancer Trials Ireland Research Group ensuring access to novel agents and research opportunities for Irish women affected by breast cancer.
She was a member of the ASCO Scientific Committee in triple negative breast cancer from 2013-2015. She is also a senior lecturer at University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin. Her research has been presented at numerous international meetings. She has authored several peer reviewed publications and served on the editorial board of several oncology journals.
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Mary Madec was born Mary O’Malley and raised in Co. Mayo near Westport. She has a Master’s in Old English from NUI, Galway and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. She works for Villanova University in Ireland.
She won the Hennessy XO Prize for Emerging Poetry in 2008 and subsequently published three collections with Salmon Poetry: In Other Words 2010 followed by Demeter Does Not Remember in 2014 and The Egret Lands With News From Other Parts in November 2019. She also edited Jessica Casey & Other Stories from Salmon Poetry, 2011, showcasing work from people with intellectual disabilities following a multi-award winning project funded by an Arts Participation Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland.
She co-authored a fundraiser volume Bosom Pals by women poets who had breast cancer which was published by Doire Press (2017). In 2021 she published a memoir piece about her autistic twin in The New Hibernia Review. Over lockdown she also returned to academic work and has an article in linguistics under consideration. She recently received an award from the Arts Council of Ireland to work on her fourth collection of poetry.
As a young mother she was diagnosed with breast cancer (DCIS) and later again in middle age at the first lockdown. She is doing very well and grateful for all the doors the cancer journey opened to her particularly that of writing.
