UL’s Professor Orla Muldoon has been awarded the 2024 European Research Council (ERC) Public Engagement with Research Award. The prize recognises ERC grantees who successfully engage audiences outside their academic domain.
Professor Muldoon’s public engagement is linked to her ERC project entitled ‘A Social Identity Model of Trauma and Identity Change: A Novel Theory of Post-Traumatic Stress, Resilience and Growth’. The public engagement addressed gender-based violence as a societal and public health issue, challenging the view that it is solely a personal or intimate problem.
Through research and public advocacy, Professor Muldoon and her team highlighted how the risk of gender-based violence shapes women’s social identities and has serious mental and physical health implications. The project aimed to shift the narrative away from seeing violence against women as a 'women’s issue' and instead focused on its systemic, patterned nature.
Following the tragic murder of a young woman while out running in Ireland, Professor Muldoon engaged the media, NGOs, and policymakers to raise awareness and push for political change. Her contributions, cited by many journalists, policy makers and in Dail Eireann, enabled the establishment of the statutory agency (Cuan) dedicated to tackling gender-based violence.
The ERC received 99 applications from ERC grantees across 20 countries, from which six winners were chosen. The names of the laureates were announced in an award ceremony in Brussels on October 24, 2024.
The jury, composed of experts in public engagement and science communication, praised Professor Muldoon’s project for its 'highly effective real-time communication, courage and passion', noting that it succeeded in gaining national media attention and achieving political change with very limited resources. The citation remarked upon how Professor Muldoon’s efforts have not only deepened understanding of gender-based violence but have also led to concrete societal and policy shifts in Ireland.
Professor Muldoon, founding professor at the Department of Psychology and Director for the Centre for Social Issues Research at UL, was awarded almost €2.5m in ERC Advanced Grant funding for research in the area of trauma.
The resulting book published in May 2024, The Social Psychology of Trauma: Connecting the Personal and the Political, re-examines what we know about trauma. In line with the ERC’s commitment to making its funded research available to the public, the book is also free to download in digital form.
Speaking after the award ceremony Professor Muldoon expressed her surprise and delight on receiving the award: “This award had come as a complete surprise. It really is an honour to receive it. I am very grateful to the panel for their positive view of our work at University of Limerick. I am also really grateful to my colleagues in the Department of Psychology at UL and in particular the researchers who work with me the GROWTH lab. The award is as much theirs as mine.”