Mental health, history of occupational therapy, history of psychiatry, impact and and legacy of political violence, school inclusion, anthropology of South Asia, medical anthropology

Innovation in healthcare, research methods, occupational science

I am Head of the School of Allied Health and Professor of Occupational Therapy at the University of Limerick.

I have backgrounds in Social Anthropology (PhD, University of Cambridge; MA, University of Alberta), Occupational Therapy (BScOT, University of Alberta; DipCOT, St. Joseph's College of Occupational Therapy, Dublin) and History (MA, University of Limerick). I have held positions at the University of Central Lancashire (1998-2007) and Leipzig University (based at Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu) (2007-2008). I joined the University of Limerick in 2009.

My research is situated at the intersection of anthropology, history, and occupational therapy, exploring how therapeutic practices and social worlds are shaped by power, knowledge, and historical contingency. With a geographic focus on Ireland and Nepal, my work addresses mental health, the history of occupational therapy in psychiatry, and the legacies of political violence.

I have published on themes including healthcare experiences in a COVID-19 field hospital, oral healing traditions, and the writings and photography of an American World War I occupational therapist in France. I am developing research on educational inclusion and student well-being.

Earlier projects examined how people navigate uncertainty and confinement, leading to studies of forensic mental health settings in Ireland and everyday life during Nepal’s civil war (1996–2006). This work produced a substantial body of scholarship, including my monograph Maoists at the Hearth: Everyday Life in Nepal’s Civil War, which analysed the impact of conflict on social life, cultural practices, and well-being.

My current research builds on my co-authored book A Place in the Country: Three Counties Asylum to investigate the professionalisation of occupational therapy in Ireland. Focusing on psychiatric hospitals in the early to mid-20th century, my forthcoming monograph interrogates the structures that shaped therapeutic practices and the dynamics that privileged some practitioners while marginalising others. It advances scholarship on the sociology of professions, feminist healthcare history, and epistemic injustice by showing how situated therapeutic knowledge was devalued in favour of formalised expertise. Situating Ireland within transnational currents, it traces how class, gender, and kinship networks influenced professionalisation and challenges linear narratives of progress, calling for a more inclusive historiography that recognises diverse forms of therapeutic knowledge.

Building on collaborations with museums in the UK, Switzerland, and Nepal, I lead a digital occupational therapy archive and work internationally to promote critical scholarship and preserve threatened archives.

I have secured competitive funding from national and international sources, including the Irish Research Council, the National Council for Special Education, the British Academy and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.