Gerard M Mullally

University College Cork | UCC · Department of Sociology

This article analyses the approaches of academics seeking to engage with private, public and community-based stakeholders through transdisciplinary research about pressing sustainability challenges and, in particular, climate change; it outlines aspects of the institutional factors which influence transdisciplinary research. A qualitative approach...

Traditionally, the relationship between engineering, social sciences, and the humanities (SSH) has often been, to varying degrees, fraught, imbalanced and/or non-existent. Engineering has oftentimes been guilty of envisaging SSH as either providing a ‘soft’ window dressing or counterbalance to ‘hard’ projects representing ‘real’ progress, or to be...

Instilling a collaborative approach can widen participation to a range of stakeholders, enabling the diffusion of sustainability and increasing local capacity to meet decarbonisation targets to mitigate against climate change. Dingle Peninsula 2030 has emerged as an international case study of a collaborative regional sustainability project, whereb...

Based on a series of walks undertaken on the Dingle Peninsula ( Chorca Dhuibhne), South-West Ireland, in March 2020 as part of the ‘ Walking Conversations’ symposium, a collaboration between Chorca Dhuibhne Creativity and Innovation Hub, Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne and the Department of Sociology & Criminology at UCC, this paper explores walking as...

Dingle Peninsula 2030 or Corca Dhuibhne 2030 (Irish translation), is a collaborative project which is seeking to transition a region in the peripheral south-west of Ireland to a low-carbon, sustainable community by 2030. The project has employed a novel governance structure through the formation of a collaborative committee. This committee consists...

This research paper explores the role of citizen and community engagement in climate mitigation projects, particularly related to climate infrastructure development in the Irish context. A change is needed with relation to the way in which institutions interact with community groups and citizens in order to effectively go about implementing the nec...

Imagining 2050 introduced a novel approach that we termed the ‘deliberative futures workshop’, which integrates deliberative dialogues into wider democratic and multi-stakeholder systems. Central to the project’s success was its ability to harness the extensive cross-disciplinary nature of the team and the trans-disciplinary nature of the resear...

Dingle Peninsula 2030 or Corca Dhuibhne 2030 (Irish translation), is a collaborative project which is seeking to transition a region in the peripheral south-west of Ireland to a low-carbon, sustainable community by 2030. The project has employed a novel governance structure through the formation of a collaborative committee. This committee consists...

Education has become an essential tool in the fight against climate change and in achieving critical sustainable development goals. Without knowledge of the intricacies of the biodiversity crisis, climate science, and the interconnected social justice issues associated with environmental degradation, how can we create innovative solutions to addres...

53,000 tonnes of blade waste from on-shore wind farms will potentially be generated in Ireland by 2040. The recycling of blades, which are made from composite material, is costly and thus far no high volume recycling solution exists. Repurposing blades into second life structures is an alternative which is gaining in popularity, but has many challe...

Background Transition discourses are gaining prominence in efforts to imagine a future that adequately addresses the urgent need to establish low carbon and climate resilient pathways. Within these discourses the ‘public’ is seen as central to the creation and implementation of appropriate interventions. The role of public engagement in societal tr...

The background to this research is that across the world there will be 200,000 tonnes of wind turbine blade waste to be disposed of each year from 2033. The purpose of the research is to compare the relative sustainability of alternative ways to deal with this waste, these being: landfill, incineration with heat recovery, co-processing in cement ki...

Metaphor, along with narrative and other linguistic devices such as myth, fable, parable and allegory, enable us to make sense of the world around us and shape how we think and act individually and collectively in relation to society and the natural world. The chapter considers the properties of metaphors and how they can promote or curtail action...

The paper develops a methodological approach that acts as a tool for active change agents working in community and just transition contexts to increase their capacity to engage a wider public in planning. An innovative contribution is made to the literature through the development of a participatory action research (PAR) based approach to social ne...

This paper uses a reflective method to gather findings with relation to a collaborative governance approach for the sociotechnical transition to a low carbon society in a regional context. As top-down and bottom-up approaches to sustainable transitions have proven insufficient in bringing about the necessary changes required to meet the demands of...

This paper investigates the support network surrounding community energy initiatives in Ireland and the potential for locally embedded organisations- which are co-ordinated centrally but consist of nation-wide local factions built on volunteerism- to act as regime-based transition intermediaries at the grassroots level to support the development an...

The Deliberative Futures Toolkit includes a series of guiding pieces that offer advice on good practice around engagement and provides guidance for those interested in incorporating different futures-thinking tools into their practice, either individually or as part of their wider process. To support the application of these tools we showcase the w...

Teksty opublikowane w numerze tematycznym Przeglądu Kulturoznawczego, przesłane w odpowiedzi na CfP: https://bit.ly/3aMGi9q /// Texts published in the thematic issue of Cultural Studies Review, in a response to the CfP: https://bit.ly/3obQzPr /// Redakcja merytoryczna: Michał Pałasz /// Edited by: Michal Palasz /// Przegląd Kulturoznawczy (Cultural...

The Trans-Atlantic Research and Development Interchange on Sustainability Workshop (TARDIS) is a meeting on scientific topics related to sustainability. The 2019 workshop theme was "On the Role of Uncertainty in Managing the Earth for Global Sustainability." This paper presents the perspectives on this topic derived from talks and discussions at th...

Identifying Pressures Recently, Ireland has witnessed a significant increase in interest in the role of citizens and communities in the energy transition to a low-carbon future. The role of communities is seen as essential in climate action and yet it is poorly understood. This report explores how to shift focus away from the individuals acting to...

The Re-Wind Design Atlas prepared in 2018 by the Re-Wind research team members is being made available to the public under a Creative Commons license - Re-Wind Resign Atlas by Re-Wind Team is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Architectures of Earth System Governance - edited by Frank Biermann May 2020

The transition to more sustainable energy systems has set about redefining the social roles and responsibilities of citizens. Implicit in this are expectations around participation, though the precise contours of what this might mean remain open. Debates around the energy transition have been skewed towards a normative construct of what it means to...

Energy transition debates have been characterized by a strong emphasis on the technical implications of shifting away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, with little consideration of social contexts. This is now changing, with a growing emphasis on reconfiguring the social aspects of energy, particularly in terms of introducing more demo...

In 2010, University College Cork (UCC) was the first institution in the world to be awarded a “Green Flag” from the Foundation for Environmental Education. Since 2011, UCC has been ranked highly in the UI Green Metric World University Rankings and, in 2018, the university participated in the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STAR...

These proceedings emphasise the value in understanding community engagement as diverse, evolving and contextually linked to social and institutional settings. Based on the practical experience of researchers in the field of community engagement in climate action it provides an overview of some existing initiatives and methods employed to engage and...

The proceedings of the Innovative Methods of Community Engagement: Toward a Low Carbon, Climate Resilient Future workshop have been developed by the Imagining2050 team in UCC and the Secretariat to the National Dialogue on Climate Action (NDCA). The NDCA also funded the workshop running costs. The proceedings offer a set of recommendations and insi...

University College Cork was the first higher education institution in the world to be awarded a Green Flag from the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) and the only institution outside of North America to achieve a STARS Gold rating. The UCC case study is an example of the integration of topdown and bottom-up approaches to drive institutio...

In 2010, University College Cork (UCC) was the first institution in the world to be awarded a “Green Flag” from the Foundation for Environmental Education. Since 2011, UCC has been ranked highly in the UI Green Metric World University Rankings and, in 2018, the university participated in the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STAR...

Exploring the lived experience of energy, Brussels

This article explores the implications of participation for Environmental Policy Integration (EPI), through the window of Irish energy policy, employing concepts of ‘energy democracy’ and ‘energy citizenship’. Our analysis of a consultation process on energy policy identifies distinctive narratives, with different idealisations of energy citizens....

Notwithstanding the acknowledged limits that universities and third level institutions can, or should, play in developing sustainability citizenship (Foster 2001; McGregor 2013), this paper considers the journey towards sustainability undertaken by University College Cork (Reidy et al. 2015) within the wider Green Campus movement in Ireland (Ryan-F...

The presentation is part of a wider project on transdisciplinary teaching and research. The presentation frames the relationship between metaphors, transition and transformation in the context of the societal challenges to sustainability in the 21st century

This presentation was delivered by Professor John O’ Halloran on behalf of the group via Skype to the Workshop on University Sustainable Campuses, Leticia (Amazonas), Colombia in July 2017. The workshop is the first step cultivating a relationship of mutual exploration, discovery, and understanding. The connection emerged from discussions between N...

This is a reflection on reflexivity in transdisciplinary sustainability transitions research, a reflection on conversations and collaboration - but not a worked out position in any sense. It transcends several projects including ENTRUST (H2020); Climate Change, Behaviour and Community Response - A Blueprint for Action; Environmental and Climate Pol...

This presentation was a contribution to a breakfast briefing hosted by Cork EcCoWell called Sustainable Development Goals: Context and Local Action. The briefing was part of the preparation for Cork UNESCO Learning City 2017. My contribution was to frame the relevance of the Global Goals in an Irish, and specifically local/ regional Cork context.

Demonstrating how a university can, in a very practical and pragmatic way, be re-envisioned through a transdisciplinary informed frame, this book shows how through an open and collegiate spirit of inquiry the most pressing and multifaceted issue of contemporary societal (un)sustainability can be addressed and understood in a way that transcends nar...

Sustainability is a normative topic framed by disciplinary perspectives. This can be problematic as the tools that are used and applied to meta-problems and ‘grand challenges’ associated with societal (un)sustainability, and which may result in proposed ‘sustainable solutions’, are framed through the lens of the ‘object world’ disciplinarian. Tradi...

Contribution to 'Public Sociology Panel'

This poster provides an overview of the work being undertaken within the ENTRUST H2020 project, which is exploring the societal dimensions of energy use. The project aims to provide a comprehensive mapping of Europe’s energy system (key actors and their intersections, technologies, markets, policies and innovations) and an in-depth understanding of...

Background: This paper focuses on discourses of transition in the electricity system in the Irish print media, with particular attention to both the framing and the scalar referents of the debate. We characterise some of the key contextual drivers for system transformation and suggest that too sharp a distinction between existing electricity infras...

A paper presented to the REGIONET Workshop: ‘Cross-Fertilisation and Integration of Results of Regional Sustainable Development Research’, January 14th-16th, Brussels

Presentation to Workshop II of the EU Thematic Network project REGIONET Regional Sustainable Development – Strategies for Effective Multi-level Governance

REGIONET Workshop: Evaluation for Regional Sustainable Development, Manchester, UK , 10-JUN-03 - 13-JUN-03

A report for the National Economic and Social Council (NESC), prepared by the Cleaner Production Promotion Unit, UCC offering an up-to-date review of the Environmental Policy Integration literature in both academic and policy debates. The report provides an overview of the theory and conceptual development; methodologies outlined and presents examp...

Sustainability is a normative topic framed by disciplinary perspectives. This can be problematic as the tools that are used and applied to meta-problems and ‘grand challenges’ associated with societal (un)sustainability, and which may result in proposed ‘sustainable solutions’, are framed through the lens of the ‘object world’ disciplinarian. Tradi...