Structured Masters by Research at the Department of Psychology

A research masters might be of interest to candidates who want to focus on research in particular, or who want to balance doing a part-time masters with other roles (e.g., relevant to clinical or educational psychology training). For each of the projects below, you would conduct your own research masters but be well-integrated into research teams already working on these projects. If you are interested in completing a research masters on one of the below topics please contact the supervisor directly and include: your CV (include information on your research experience/training at UG level), an outline of why you are interested in the particular topic.

Please also indicate if your preference is to undertake the Structured Masters on a full-time or part-time basis. Note that the fees for the first project listed are funded on a one-year full-time basis; the other projects are for students interested in self-funded masters. More information on the research masters in the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences (of which the Department of Psychology is a part) is available here: https://www.ul.ie/gps/course/structured-masters-research

Project Title: School Wellbeing Post Covid-19
Project Supervisor: Dr Jennifer McMahon (@JennyTalksPsych)
We are seeking an enthusiastic postgraduate student to work with us on the evaluation of the first digital badge in wellbeing for Irish teachers accredited by the Teaching Council of Ireland. The fees for this one year master’s programme is fully funded.
The situation whereby the educational research agenda is set by those who are not ultimately the end-users of the knowledge created has long been lamented as the “fatal flaw in educational research” (Hargreaves, 1996 p.6). This research-practice gap means the potential impact of research on practice is rarely realised – this means that much of the teaching and learning resources targeted at our children and young people through our schools could be further enhanced if they were more research informed. T-REX Teachers Research Exchange addresses the research-practice gap in education for teachers, student teachers and HEI researchers in Ireland. The T-REX Digital Badge strategy; this involves recruiting 30 teachers (approx.) who are interested in the area of wellbeing and mental health and running an online course on T-REX to support these teachers to build their research literacy skills so that they can review the latest research evidence on interventions for supporting student wellbeing and to ultimately use this evidence to develop a bespoke action plan for their classroom/school. The proposed programme of research will evaluate a pilot of the digital badge in Autumn 2021 and will be a collaboration between University of Limerick and Mary Immaculate College.

Project Title: Exploring structural factors related to loneliness in young adulthood
Project Supervisor: Dr Ann-Marie Creaven (Ann-Marie.Creaven@ul.ie; @amcreaven)
Loneliness is a subjective negative experience that results from perceiving our social relationships to be inadequate. Although loneliness is often viewed as an issue only for older adults, it can be experienced across the lifespan. In fact, young adults have comparable, if not higher, levels of loneliness relative to older adults. The ELSIE project (Exploring Loneliness and Social Isolation in Emerging adulthood) is dedicated to understanding loneliness in emerging adulthood. More information on ELSIE and the research team is here: https://www.sashlab.com/elsie.
We are looking for a candidate interested in pursuing a masters by research on either a full-time or part-time basis who will focus on a complementary project to the main ELSIE project – quantitative research on neighbourhood/community/structural factors relevant to loneliness. This is an understudied area at present. The masters candidate will work alongside Dr Creaven and join the iTeach lab which has a focus on youth mental health. We will support the candidate to develop their own particular interests and skillset during the course of the masters. For example, there will be opportunities to work on the larger ELSIE project and/or to develop PPI (public-patient involvement) skills depending on the candidate’s interests.

Project Title: The CV19 Heroes project
Project Supervisor: Dr Elaine Kinsella (Elaine.Kinsella@ul.ie; @elainekinsella)
The CV19 Heroes project (www.cv19heroes.com) was set up in March 2020 to track the wellbeing, burnout and resilience levels of frontline workers in the UK and Ireland. Building on the work conducted so far, we would like to recruit a postgraduate (Masters) student to help us to further our research with frontline workers across all sectors (including healthcare, supply-chain, and logistics). Specifically, we would like the postgraduate student to work with us to capitalise on our existing database of frontline workers to make inroads into the extent of disaster/emergency preparedness across a range of frontline sectors prior to onset of the Covid-19 pandemic using a PPI (public and participant involvement) approach. This work aims to prevent future loss of life and sickness by mitigating risks and strengthening preparedness and response capacities across a range of sectors by helping to develop more effective, research-informed and co-designed emergency response protocols for future crises.