Sociology - Research

We aim:



- To provide high quality research training in a lively intellectual atmosphere

- To promote students' professional involvement in academic life

- To ensure that students will make a contribution to the advancement of knowledge in sociology

- And to ensure that students will make a contribution to the understanding and well being of contemporary societies



By the end of their time as a research postgraduate student in the Department it is our goal that students will:



- Have completed a thesis which is a high quality piece of orginal sociological analysis and is at least partly publishable in a peer-reviewed academic outlet

- Have developed and demonstrated a significant level of skill in at least one methodology of sociological research and analysis

- Have a broad knowledge of a number of sub-fields within sociology

- And have had the opportunity to develop teaching and administrative skills and experience



Students acquire 30 credits in the first three years (60 in the case of postgraduates who do not already have an MA) through taking a combination of compulsory and optional courses oriented towards broadening theoretical perspectives, offering methodological expertise, and providing guidance on teaching at third level.

Minimum 2.1 degree in BA or MA in Sociology or Cognate subject. Applications with equivalent learning are also welcomed.



Applicants must have a recognised primary degree which is considered equivalent to Irish university primary degree level.



Applicants are advised to contact the Department to discuss their research topic before submitting a required research proposal of 7-10 pages duration. Please see course website for further details.



Minimum English language requirements:



IELTS: 6.5 minimum overall score

TOEFL (Paper based test): 585

TOEFL (Internet based test): 95

PTE (Pearson): 62



Maynooth University's TOEFL code is 8850

Applications are open for the 2025/6 academic year. Visit our online application portal to start your application.

We are here to support you throughout the admissions process.



For queries on your postgraduate course options please contact pgstudies@mu.ie

For queries or support on your application process please contact pgadmissions@mu.ie



If you are an international (Non-EU) applicant please contact internationaladmissions@mu.ie

4 years Full-time, 6 years Part-time

In general, there are two levels of fees payable. EU students from EU countries including Ireland pay a subsidised level of fees for both taught courses and research programmes. Tuition fees for students from outside the EU are not subsidised and are thus somewhat higher than for EU students.

Commences September

Research

Third Level Teaching

Government

Policy Analysis

Private, Community and Voluntary Sectors

Media and New Technology

Urban, Rural and Community Planning

Dr. Mary Benson

Cityscapes; gentrification; place; community; and visual representations. Current research focuses on urban agriculture.


Dr. Delma Byrne

Research interests include social stratification in education and the labour market spanning the primary, second-level and higher education sectors as well as post-secondary education and training; transitions between education and the labour market and the evaluation of educational interventions.


Dr. Barry Cannon

Research interests are on Latin American politics, with particular expertise on Peru, Venezuela and Central America, especially on issues of democratization, power relations, Left and Right politics, civil society, and development. Current research focuses on opposition politics in Venezuela; right wing politics in Latin America; and, comparisons between collective reactions to crisis in Latin America and in Ireland and Europe.


Dr. Brian Conway

Research interests include sociology of religion; collective memory; history of Irish sociology. Current research focuses on examining Catholic public discourses and institutional arrangements, trends and patterns in the Catholic workforce, and religious institutional responses to scandal, all in comparative perspective.


Professor Mary P. Corcoran

The Irish migratory experience, public culture, and urban transformation and change. Professor Corcoran is currently engaged in research on urban agriculture initiatives and urban food policy.


Dr. Colin Coulter

Research interests include development studies, global politics, Marxism, ethnicity and nationalism, popular culture and in particular popular music and Northern Irish politics and society.


Dr. Laurence Cox

Research interests include social movement research (movement waves, alterglobalization and anti-austerity movements, European social movements, movement theorising, protest policing, knowledge and learning production in social movements, activist sustainability); Buddhist Studies (Buddhism and Ireland, early western Buddhists in Asia); new religious movements; sociology of knowledge and culture (history of ideas, sociology of intellectuals, counter culture); working-class studies (community organising, oral history); social theory (western Marxism, socialist feminism); and methodology (participatory action research, community research).


Dr. Pauline Cullen

Research interests include political sociology; gender inequality, social movements; civil society and state relations; nongovernmental organisations; social policy and European Integration; coalitions between diverse constituencies; activism on social rights beyond national settings.


Professor G. Honor Fagan

Research interests include Human Security, Gender and Development Governance, and Social Sustainability.


Dr. Eoin Flaherty


I am interested in how patterns of inequality are formed and maintained, and how they change over time. I study these processes with a particular focus on income inequality during the late 20th/early 21st century, and instances of famine during the 19th century (mainly Ireland). I am also interested in how human societies have formed systems of cooperation and managed resources collectively, and whether such systems were resilient to environmental stress.


I am also interested in: Top incomes and the 'super-rich', labour's share of national income, time series and pooled time series cross-section analysis. Financialisation, rentiers, and power resources. Famine, common-pool resource systems, primitive communism, and nineteenth-century Ireland. Complexity theory, human ecology, and environmental sociology.


Prof. Jane Gray

Research and teaching interests include families and households, comparative-historical sociology, life history analysis. Her current research focuses on: life histories and social change in twentieth century Ireland; family and community, gender, household economies and social change.


Dr. Aphra Kerr

Teaching and Research interests focus on technology and media in society and digital sociology. Current research explores the implications of data driven digital media design, online community management work, production in the global digital games industry, and the rise of the 'indie'. Recent projects have explored broadcasting and diversity, innovation in animation companies, the design of future telecommunications network services and applications and gendered practices and representations in digital games culture.


Dr. Rebecca King Ó Riain

Research and teaching interests include globalization, emotions and technology; racial/ethnic beauty pageants; critical race theory; qualitative methods; interracial marriage and multiracial people. Her current research explores the 'Globalization of Love' through qualitative research with transnational, mixed couples and their children looking at uses of digital technology to create and maintain global emotional networks.


Dr. Mary Murphy

Research interests include the impact of globalisation on welfare states, the political mediation of social policy reform, local governance and institutional mechanisms to support social innovation, social inclusion and citizenship, gender and social welfare, commodification, conditionality and welfare to work policies.


Dr. Peter Murray

Research and teaching interests include political mobilisation and the growth of the modern state, industry, work and technological change, health, illness and healing.


Prof. John O'Brennan

Research interests include the process and politics of European Union enlargement; the EU's relationship with the western Balkans and prospective enlargement to South Eastern Europe; the dynamics of EU external relations; EU-Russian relations; constructivist theories of International Politics; and the identity dimension to European integration. I am also very interested in Ireland's experience of European integration, its relationship with the European Union and the Lisbon Treaty debate in Ireland.


Professor Seán Ó Riain

Research interests are in the sociology of work, economic sociology, comparative and global political economy and social inequality. Specific areas of interest include work organisation and workplace regimes; developmental states; the global knowledge economy; economic liberalism; changing European societies.


Dr. Paul Ryan

Research interests include masculinities, gay and lesbian studies, social movements and qualitative research methods specifically the use of life history


Dr. Eamonn Slater

Research interests include the structure of modernity, the heritage industry (including tourism), the social construction of landscape and the environment, visual sociology and historical sociology. All of these sociological areas are investigated with a special emphasis on Irish society.


For further details on the research specialisms within the Department please visit: https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/sociology/our-people