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Professor Anne MacFarlane, B.A., M.A., PhD
Professor of Primary Healthcare Research, School of Medicine
Anne is founder and overall academic lead for the PPI Research Unit. She is the Director of WHO Collaborating Centre for Migrant’s Involvement in Health Research which is hosted in the Unit. She is a social scientist with more than 25 years’ experience using qualitative research methods in health services research. She has specialist expertise in participatory health research, particularly in relation to migrant health. Anne is Principal Investigator for a number of participatory health research projects (see our Research tab). She established and led PPI as a theme in the Health Research Institute (HRI) (2016-2019) to build capacity in the UL health research community for partnered research across topics and disciplines.
Anne is involved with international collaborations in Europe and North America to advance the evidence base about best practice for PPI and participatory health research. She is active in projects with WHO Europe, the International Collaboration for Participatory Health Research and the North American Primary Care Research Group. Her current research interests include the sociological concept of space and how this can enhance understanding of participatory spaces in health.
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Professor Helen Phelan, B.A., B.Mus., H.Dip (Ed.), M.A., PhD.
Professor of Arts Practice and Director of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance
Helen Phelan is Director of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Ireland. As Professor of Arts Practice, she is an internationally recognised advocate for the integration of artistic methods into research cultures. She is a multi-award winning Irish Research Council recipient for her work on music and migration, including her current IRC COALESCE award (ADD: The Arts, Data Literacy and Diversity) with Professor of Biomedical Statistics, Ailish Hannigan. She is founder of the UL Singing and Social Inclusion research group, co-founder of the female vocal ensemble Cantoral, and current Chair of IMBAS, a national network for artistic research in Ireland. Recent books include Singing the Rite to Belong: Music, Ritual and the New Irish (Oxford University Press), and The Artist and Academia (Routledge) edited with Graham Welch. She was appointed Principle Investigator for the Health Research Institute PART-IM (Participatory and Arts-Based Methods involving Migrants in Health Research) research cluster from 2019-2023. Since 2023, she is the co-director, with Professor Anne MacFarlane, of the Participatory Health Research Unit, a World Health Organisation collaborating centre at the University of Limerick.
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Dr Jon Salsberg, B.A., M.A., PhD.
Associate Professor of Primary Healthcare - Public and Patient Involvement, School of Medicine.
Jon Salsberg is Associate Professor of Primary Health Care Research - Public and Patient Involvement, in the School of Medicine, University of Limerick, Ireland, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Family Medicine, McGill University, Canada. He is Course Director for the UL School of Medicine's Professional Diploma in Public & Patient Involvement. Jon is a public health researcher with a background in health promotion and the anthropology of development. His research interests are in understanding the social-relational dimensions of research partnerships, and how research ownership moves from academia to community. Jon is co-author of Canada's Guide to Researcher and Knowledge-User Collaboration in Health Research, was a founding member of Participatory Research at McGill (PRAM), McGill University, Montreal, Canada, was inaugural Co-Chair of NAPCRG's Participatory Health Research Working Group , and is on the executive committee of the International Collaboration for Participatory Health Research.
Jon has undertaken partnered research involving a broad range of stakeholders including patients, health practitioners, community organisations, policy makers and health service decision-makers, and has worked extensively with Indigenous communities, particularly the award-winning Kahnawake Schools Diabetes Prevention Project.
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Professor Ailish Hannigan, B.Sc., PhD.
Associate Professor of Biomedical Statistics, School of Medicine
Ailish is the lead for quantitative research in the PPI Research Unit. She is Principal Investigator for the Vulnerable New Communities project and leads the quantitative work package for HRB EMH-IC. She has over 20 years’ experience as a statistician and educator and acts as statistical consultant both nationally and internationally. Her research interests include population health, the design and analysis of cohort and registry studies, and the potential and challenges for PPI in quantitative health research.
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Lorna Kerin, B.A., H.Dip., MCAT
Manager, Participatory Health Research Unit, School of Medicine
Lorna manages the Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) Research Unit in University of Limerick. She is also Programme Manager for the UL PPI Ignite Network grant 2021-2026. Lorna has over 25 years of working in community and academic participatory health research. She is a Social Scientist, specialised in participatory health research, co-production methodologies, arts based research, and outcomes based accountability. She is also a qualified Integrative Psychotherapist and Creative Arts Therapist.
Lorna has a keen interest in implementation science and has developed multi-stakeholder county plans for area based interventions for children and young people in Dublin (Tusla Child and Family Agency) and evidence based intervention programmes in Regeneration areas of Limerick (Incredible Years). Her ongoing research since 2014 involves co-production initiatives with patients, clinicians and HSE Disability to inform the development of integrated health services for children and young people with the ‘most common’ of rare chromosomal disorders, 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. Lorna was previously Manager of Public Patient Involvement in Research at RCSI University of Medical and Healthcare Sciences, where she established the RCSI PPI Ignite Network to build institutional capacity for medical and healthcare researchers to conduct meaningful PPI. Lorna also previously led Public Patient Involvement in FutureNeuro SFI Center for Chronic and Rare Neurological Diseases where she established the first national Neurological PPI Panel and led out on the Deliberative Dialogue on Genomics to inform the implementation of national HSE policy.
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Dr Sylvia Murphy Tighe, M.Sc., RGN, PHN, Ph.D.
Lecturer in Midwifery
Sylvia is a registered nurse, midwife and public health nurse. She is a Lecturer in Midwifery at University of Limerick. She undertook her doctoral research which was funded by the Health Research Board 2013-2016 exploring the nature and impact of concealed pregnancy and graduated with her PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2017.
Sylvia is interested in arts-based research methods and brought The Spaces Between Us to University of Limerick in 2018. The exhibition and symposium dealt with the sensitive subject of concealed and tragic outcomes such as infanticide. Sylvia is currently involved in an EU COST Action looking at perinatal mental health and birth related trauma, a study involving PHN’s enquiring into domestic violence, and a Health Research Institute-funded study, PART-IM, exploring migrant health and arts based research methods.
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Dr Fran Garry, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher in Participatory Arts-Based Migrant Health Research,
Irish World Academy of Music and Dance
Fran is a singer/songwriter, community music educator, and arts practice researcher. She is postdoctoral researcher for the Participatory and Arts-Based Methods Involving Migrants in Health Research (PART-IM) cluster.
Fran completed her PhD Arts Practice (Music) at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance in 2018. She received an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship award for her research project, entitled: ‘Lived Experiences in Community Arts in Ireland-an autoethnographic and ethnographic, practice-based study’. Her research interests include musical participation and wellbeing, community arts engagement, arts and cultural policy, and arts practice and arts-based research methods. She has published in journals such as Transform-New Voices in Community Music, The Irish Journal of Arts Management and Cultural Policy, and ICTM, Ireland (International Council for Traditional Music.
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Dr Susann Huschke, M.A., PhD.
Research Fellow in Social Inclusion and Health
Susann is a medical anthropologist who researches the interconnected fields of health, gender and migration. She is currently collaborating with the Birth Rights Alliance Ireland on a participatory health research project on medicalisation, autonomy and decision-making in childbirth. Past research projects included an ethnographic study on undocumented migrants’ access to healthcare in Berlin, Germany; a government funded study on the Northern Irish sex industry; and a participatory arts-based project on the health and well-being of sex workers in Soweto, South Africa. Susann’s theoretical approach draws on feminist and postcolonial scholarship, with a particular interest in the concepts of consent, choice, and agency. Susann is a part-time academic and also works as a birth doula.
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Dr Clodagh Toomey B.Sc. Ph.D. (Physiotherapy)
Research Fellow, School of Allied Health
Clodagh completed her PhD in 2014 from University of Limerick and her Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2017 from the Faculty of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary, also holding an adjunct position there. Her research focuses on the prevention and treatment of chronic musculoskeletal disease, using patient and clinician involvement to guide and inform implementation of evidence-based programmes in health service delivery.
She is currently a recipient of a Health Research Board Emerging Investigator Award which is investigating the IMPlementation of Clinical guidelines of osteoArthritis Together (IMPACT). This will take a participatory health research approach to forming implementation strategies that will ensure exercise and education are first line treatment options for patients with hip and knee osteoarthritis in the Irish healthcare system.
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Dr Molly Manning, BSc, MPhil, MSc, PhD
Lecturer in Speech and Language Therapy, School of Allied Health
Molly is a Speech & Language Therapist who comes from a healthcare project management and service design background. She is interested in facilitating meaningful inclusion of multi-stakeholder perspectives in intervention design and health policy implementation. She recently completed a HRB funded PhD in Health Services Research and Population Health. Working with PPI contributors with post-stroke aphasia, Molly developed policy recommendations for optimising stroke care in Ireland. She is currently progressing the implementation of these recommendations. Current projects include establishing a collaborative interdisciplinary community of practice for improved access to psychological care for people with aphasia and leading a study examining inclusion and retention of people with aphasia in stroke trials.
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Dr Kathleen Markey, RN, PhD, MSc, PGCHE, BSc
Course Director for international programmes and Lecturer, Department of Nursing & Midwifery
Kathleen is Course Director for international programmes and is a lecturer at the Department of Nursing and Midwifery. She facilitates intercultural learning and cultural competence development on undergraduate and postgraduate modules. Her research is mostly in the arena of cultural diversity and specifically migrant health, cultural competence and intercultural learning. Kathleen chaired a very successful Health Research Board funded Inaugural national refugee and migrant health research seminar: An arts based event, on 9th Dec 2022. She is a member of both the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Migrant's Involvement in Health Research, at University of Limerick and the HRI Participatory and Arts-Based Methods Involving Migrants in Health Research cluster (PART-IM).
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Dr Tríona McCaffrey
Tríona McCaffrey is a Associate Professor in music therapy at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, UL. She holds a BA in Music and Irish (Trinity College Dublin), MA in Music Therapy (UL), Graduate Diploma in Psychology (Open University) and PhD in service user evaluation of music therapy in mental health (UL). Prior to her appointment at UL she was music therapist at Mayo Mental Health Services (HSE). She has a track record of collaborative working with health service users and providers and has completed several Public and Patient Involvement projects. She is founder of the ‘Alliance for Recovery Research in Mental Health’, an international group of music therapy services users, providers and researchers from Ireland, Norway and the U.K who collaborate on mental health research. Tríona has ran a number of music and perinatal wellbeing projects with the University Maternity Hospital Limerick, ABC Start Right Programme (Paul Partnership Limerick, CLG) and regularly advises on music therapy service development nationally. Her research is most often interdisciplinary focusing on music, music therapy and the arts for mental health recovery and, parental and infant mental health. Email: triona.mccaffrey@ul.ie
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Anne Cronin
Anne Cronin is a PhD student in the School of Medicine under the supervision of Prof Anne MacFarlane and Dr Nuha Ibrahim and is a member of the Participatory Health Research Unit. Anne is studying migrant health with a particular focus on communication barriers as a public health issue - particularly the obstacles to routine use of interpreters in primary care services. Anne graduated from UL with a BA in European Studies in 1998, an MA in Peace and Development Studies in 2003 and an MSc in Public Health in 2021. Anne worked in inclusion health from 2003 - 2020, predominantly setting up homeless, disability and addiction services for poorly served and marginalised communities in Limerick, the Mid West and nation-wide. She was head of services for a national NGO until her return to UL in 2020. She currently works in HSE Social Inclusion in CHO 7 supporting the Migrant Health Team as part of the Response for Vulnerable People (RVP) service. She continues to consult with housing and homeless NGOs around the implementation of Trauma Informed Care in the sector. Anne’s main interests are social exclusion, health equity, participatory health research and trauma informed practice. She is also an environmental activist and vice-chair of the Limerick Cycling Campaign and the Limerick Cycle Bus (supporting children to cycle to school) which is a model replicated throughout the country. She sits on the Board of the Northstar Family Support Service and Chairs the University Hospital Groups’ Arts Committee.
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Anna Papyan
Research Assistant, PPI Ignite Networks-UL
Anna is a graduate of sociology from Yerevan State University, Armenia․ With extensive experience in both quantitative and qualitative research methods, she has worked on a variety of research projects in health, education, migration, human rights, civic activism, public policy. Anna has also collaborated with several community development initiatives on awareness raising, capacity building, civic participation, activism and the promotion of human rights. She has experience in organisation and facilitation of trainings, seminars and discussions using participatory approaches and techniques.
Anna moved to Ireland from Armenia in 2009. In 2011 Anna started to volunteer at Shannon Family Resource Centre and was involved in a number of initiatives within the organisation. Since March 2022 she works as Community Development Worker there and works closely with different groups in community, including migrants and ethnic minorities. Anna was involved in a few participatory research projects with UL. Within the Ethnic Minority Health research project, she organised and supported facilitation of participatory group discussion with community members of different ethnic backgrounds. As a research assistant in the Research Prioritisation for Migrant Health project, Anna was involved in the preparation and facilitation of World Café style discussions using participatory art-based methods.
In April 2022 Anna joined the team of at PPI Ignite Network Project at UL as Research Assistant.
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Stephanie Daly
Projects Administrator, PPI
Stephanie's background is primarily in people change and human resource support positions. She worked for several years internationally in both Canada and the UK in technical talent acquisition and holds a Bachelors Degree in Applied Social Work Studies from Limerick Institute of Technology.
