Professor Geraldine Mooney Simmie's PhD theorisation and research interest is in emancipatory teaching and teachers' professional learning and their policy enactment in STEM and STEAM education for the greater good of society and a caring and just democracy.

Professor Mooney Simmie's research studes are designed using critical and feminist perspectives and methodological approaches. Professor Mooney Simmie has been successful in securing a number of high profile competitive grant applications for extensive research funding from the European Commission (e.g. European Comenius 2.1 projects in teacher education and training with in-career science and math teachers) and nationally, from the Department of Education and Skills and the National Forum for Teaching and Learning in relation to science and math teacher learning, curriculum and pedagogical innovation.

These Research & Innovation projects worked with emancipatory and deliberative designs: the teacher as an extended and advanced professional and teaching with 'open enough' intellectual, moral and political spaces for critical consciousness, engagement and mediation with the wider moral, social and political world.

RESEARCH GRANT(S) AWARDED include the following:

EUDIST 2002-2005 106278-CP-1-2002-1-DE-COMENIUS-C21 European Development of Innovative Science Teaching. Role: Transnational Partner Euro 10,000.

GIMMS 2006-2009 128749-CP-1-2006-1-IE-Comenius-C21 Gender, Innovation and Mentoring in Mathematics and Science. Role: Project Coordinator: Euro 240,000.

CROSSNET 2006-2009 129358-CP-1-1-COMENIUS-C21 Crossing Boundaries in Science Education Role: Transnational Partner. Euro 20,000.

DLIS 2008-2010 www.dlis.eu/ Cirrius: Leonardo da Vinci Project Datalogging in Science Education 2008-0008 Project Number LLP-LdV-ToI/2008/803. Role: Evaluator and Transnational Partner. Euro 20,000.

Start-Up Grant-Assistance Masters in Education (Mentoring) 2006-2019 : Department of Education and Skills. Role: Course Director. Euro 48,000.

NTIPP 2006-2010 Pilot Programme Induction : Department of Education and Skills Role: Local Coordinator. Euro 46,000.

National Teacher Induction Programme Partner with Mary Immaculate College. Collaborative Research Funding Bid with School of Education, UL: Funder: Department of Education and Skills. Role: Researcher. Euro 20,000.

In the School of Education, University of Limerick, Professor Geraldine Mooney Simmie makes a significant contribution to excellence in teaching, supervision and curriculum innovation. Geraldine acts as Module Leader for a number of modules, including EN7013 Policy Studies, a core policy module in the structured PhD in Education.  Geraldine critical reflexive approach to teachers' work practices, good teaching and teachers' professional learning is shared with the first year undergraduate classes and as a guest lecturer in the Contemporary Issiues in the Philosophy of Education.  Professor Mooney Simmie draws from an integrated and holistic approach between teaching and research, where they are both understood as entangled together within a theory-experience-praxis axis that cannot be readily atomised. Education is therefore understood as having multiple and contradictory purposes relation to the symbolic and cultural tasks of human becoming as a subject [subjectivity] as much as learning to fit into the contemporary society [socialisation] and being prepared for the world of work [qualification]. Professor Mooney Simmie has published in substantive journals her theorisations of 'good teaching' and 'teacher's professional learning' within the the necessity for a new conceptual map and language to infer this praxis at a time when education and teaching are becoming rapidly reduced to a system of performance management and metrics.