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Category: Social Lives

Bringing the Conversation on Digital Accessibility into the Mainstream

Social Lives

Author: Emma Smith, Assisting Living and Learning (ALL) Institute Member and Post-Doctoral Researcher; recipient of the prestigious Marie Sklowdowska Curie Actions Individual Fellowship

Emma Smith Profile Pic
Emma Smith

Our lives are increasingly digital. From the moment we wake up in the morning, to before we go to bed, we are connected. A recent report from the BBC suggests people are spending, on average, a third of their waking hours on mobile apps.  Even in lower income contexts, 30-50% of people have been reported to be connected to mobile ‘smart’ devices. Those of us living in higher income contexts, like Ireland, are also connected in other ways – through smart watches and health tracking devices like the Oura ring, smart homes, our cars, and of course our computers. The reality is that it is becoming more and more difficult to escape a digital world.

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Maynooth University’s Social Justice Week: Reflections on the Intersections between the DANCING project and the SDGs

Social Lives

Author: Léa Urzel, PhD Researcher ERC Project DANCING, Assisting Living and Learning (ALL) Institute, Department of Law, Maynooth University

DANCING Logo

The Social Justice Week is currently taking place at Maynooth University. Thanks to the collaboration of staff, students and other agencies, an array of events has been organised to promote social justice and human rights. This year’s edition is dedicated to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Adopted in 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development established ‘an action plan for people, planet and prosperity’ and introduced 17 SDGs to guide decisions of a wide range of stakeholders at State, regional and global level. Under this UN initiative, world leaders have committed to taking joint action to achieve the SDGs and the 169 associated targets over the next 15 years. Integrated and indivisible, the SDGs and its related targets address global challenges ranging from poverty, health, education, gender equality to clean water, sanitation, or climate action.

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Learning as a Lifelong Process

Social Lives

Author: Dr. Katja Seidel, Senior Post-Doc Researcher in SHAPES (Horizon 2020); Department of Anthropology and Assisting Living & Learning (ALL) Institute at Maynooth University

Katja Seidel
Katja Seidel

We all learn. Every day we live we experience something new, acquire novel skills or engage with a new person or activity for the first time. Learning thus never ends, not even when we leave formal educational pathways or retire. The Horizon 2020 Innovation Action research project SHAPES (Smart and Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in Supportive Systems) led by Maynooth University and ALL Institute members, starts from the assumption that people of all ages are capable of learning and integrating new tools and behaviours into their lives, especially when assisted in an appropriate manner. This four-year research project looks at ways in which integrated care and governance models as well as smart technologies can support community dwelling older adults to live healthy and active lives, and investigates different pathways for change and innovation that will have a beneficial impact on our societies in Europe.

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Gender-based Violence and Disabled Women: Let’s Talk

Social Lives

Author: Eliona Gjecaj is an early-stage researcher in the DARE project (Disability Advocacy Research Europe) based at the University of Iceland. Her PhD research focuses on ‘Violence against Disabled Women: Access to Justice’ in Iceland and the UK.

Eliona Gjecaj
Eliona Gjecaj

Today, on International Women’s Day, I would like to celebrate all the survivors of gender-based violence, especially disabled women, and encourage others to come forward and tell someone. Gender-based violence is not and should not be taboo. Much like the saying ‘talk the talk, walk the walk’, we must have the experience talk. We must access the justice walk.

Let’s first  highlight that there are so many unheard experiences of gender-based violence of disabled women that we need to hear, to believe, to recognise as breaches of law, and thus, provide support and access to reporting and prosecuting such violence. Lack of disability-rights-based knowledge, awareness, and training should not be the defence, but rather acknowledged and addressed. Not just in Ireland, but in many countries across Europe.

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The impact of Covid-19 on women in academia: A step backwards for gender equality?

Social Lives

Author: Dr Rebecca Maguire, Department of Psychology, Maynooth University

Rebecca Maguire
Rebecca Maguire

International Women’s Day is a great time to celebrate the numerous achievements of women across the world. However, it is also an important time to reflect on the struggles and inequalities that persist for many. Unfortunately, despite significant strides towards gender* equality in recent years, as a group, women remain disadvantaged in the world of work relative to their male counterparts. This includes the oft-cited gender pay gap – the difference in median earnings between men and women – that persists in many sectors. Academia is no exception to this, with a recent report from the HEA showing that, in 2020, men made up 73% of Professors in Ireland, compared to women who made up just 27%. This is despite the fact that women make up a greater proportion of early career researchers and lecturers in academia – an effect often referred to as the “leaky pipeline”.

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Open Science – what is it and can we teach it?

Social Lives

Author: Dr Nicola Mountford, Assistant Professor, School of Business, Maynooth University

Nicola Mountford
Nicola Mountford

Opening Doors is a collaborative, interdisciplinary, intersectoral and international learning experience for early career researchers in Open Science and Open Innovation – applicable to all academic disciplines.  As the project to develop and pilot this learning experience draws to a close, I reflect on my own learning experience as one of the principal investigators within the consortium.

Opening Doors, is an EU-funded co-ordination action aimed to research and develop a learning experience and networking opportunity for early career researchers using open, online resources. Specifically, our proposal said that we would focus on open science and open innovation. The first time our consortium met – Maynooth University (MU), Aarhus University (Denmark), the National Training Fund (Czech Republic), and UCD (Lead) – we spent a surprising amount of time discussing what open science and open innovation meant to the various partners. Coming from the School of Business, I had a good sense of what was meant by open innovation – as Chesbrough put it, “a more distributed, more participatory, more decentralized approach to innovation”. When it came to defining open science, however, I struggled. Following the definition of open innovation, open science presumably indicated a more distributed, more participatory, more decentralized approach to science. But, when we speak of open innovation, we tend to see industry-based innovators reaching into academia and across the general public. Open science seemed to require that we academics return the favour.

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The future of work and disability: learning our way forward

Social Lives

Author: Joan O’Donnell, Doctoral researcher with the Assisting Living and Learning (ALL) Institute, funded by ADVANCE CRT and the SFI. She lectures in the MSc programme in Systems Thinking In Practice with the Open University and is the author of the Employers for Change report referred to in this blog.

Joan O Donnell Profile Picture
Joan O Donnell

Continuous advances in technology and Assistive Technology (AT) enhance the range of work that people can do outside the office environment, making working-from-home (WFH), hybrid or remote working a realistic option for many workers with disabilities.  It may suit those seeking greater flexibility in their working day, allow for better management of disabling conditions at home or sidestep the need to negotiate public transport.

Disability and work poses a complex issue that persists despite broad recognition of the interrelationship between disability, poverty, education, housing in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) Article 27, which commits to safeguarding and promoting the right for disabled people to work on par with others. While  the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) suggests there is a greater need to engage employers to build a better world of work for persons with disabilities, the ESRI finds that  there is also a need to understand the experience of disabled people in work.

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Women & Girls in STEM: We Need a New Pipeline!

Social Lives

Authors: Dr Katriona O’Sullivan, Digital Skills Lecturer, ALL Institute, Maynooth University. Dr Serena Clarke, Post-Doctoral Researcher, ALL Institute, Maynooth University. Dr Holly Foley, Programme Manager, STEM Passport for Inclusion, ALL Institute Maynooth University.

Girls studying Science a group of girls studying science and using technology
Pictures from STEM Passport for Inclusion | Maynooth University Lab Days

 When thinking about women’s participation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), we often use the leaky pipeline as an analogy. There are specific places where women ‘leak’ out. For example, in school, young girls who show an early interest in science careers have often changed their minds by the time they reach secondary school due to a lack of STEM subjects and STEM supports being offered to them.  In college women who opt for STEM often change their minds before graduation. Those who do graduate with a STEM degree often leak out of the pipeline after graduation -opting for careers that are suitable to their family life. While others hit the glass ceiling when trying to progress into STEM leadership roles. In all cases, we see that women leak out of the STEM pipeline more than men do (Clark Blickenstaff, 2005). When considering the pipeline analogy, it is about time that we admitted as a society, especially on a day like today –International Women and Girl in STEM Day– that the STEM pipeline is well and truly broken– in fact, we need a whole new plumbing system… and we could probably do with a group of female scientists and engineers on hand to make sure it doesn’t break again.

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Supported Decision Making and Next of Kin: The DSS Perspective and new perspectives for innovative participatory research

Social Lives

Author: Hannah Casey, Assisting Living & Learning( ALL) Institute Blog editor and PhD Candidate, Decision Support Service

Hannah Casey Profile Picture
Hannah Casey

Supported Decision Making is a method that may be employed by persons who require help to make decisions in their day-to-day lives. These decisions may range from, where to go on holiday, to, how to manage financial concerns. Supported Decision Making is gaining traction and importance across the globe, and particularly in an Irish context in anticipation of the Assisted Decision Making (Capacity) Act 2015, set to be commenced in full by mid-2022. This has the added effect of ensuring Ireland may fully honour Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which states that persons with disabilities have the right to make their own decisions, and enjoy the same legal capacity that people without disabilities have in their lives. The Decision Support Service (DSS) has been established to support persons to exercise their right to make decisions, with the key understanding that a person’s capacity to make decisions should be assessed by reference to the decision in question.

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