Katherine Cagney

[email protected]

Location

Waterford

Campus

College Street campus

Room name or number C113
ORCID NUMBER 0000-0003-4194-166X
Social Media

Biography

Katherine works as a lecturer in the Department of Arts. She holds a Bachelor of Science (Open), a Diploma in Sociology and Bachelor of Science ( Honours) in Psychology (1st Class) from the Open University. She received her doctorate in 2014. She is a chartered member of The British Psychological Society.

Currently Katherine teaches a broad range of psychology subjects to various undergraduate modules. These subjects include, Developmental Psychology, Individual Difference and Abnormal Psychology, Social Psychology, Introduction to Psychology and Lifespan Psychology. These subjects are delivered to a diverse group of students ranging from BA Arts, BA Psychology, BA Social Science, BA Social Care Practice and BA Early Childhood Studies. Katherine also teaches Lifespace interventions, an applied creativity module to BA Social Care Practice. In keeping with much of the interdiscplinary nature of her career she is a keen tutor of Sociology of Contemporary Ireland for BA Social Science. Katherine is an experienced academic mentor to students from the BA Early Childhood Studies and BA Social Care Practice course while on practice placement. She is also a postgraduate supervisor.

Katherine's research interests are interdisciplinary in nature. In particular the sociology of families and children coupled with a focus on developmental psychology. Family stories and family routines and rituals are of passionate interest and the focus of much of her work to date. Breastfeeding practices in and Irish context are also of keen interest and link to past professional experience.

Cultural geographies and children’s geographies are also important and have been the focus of national and international conference papers. In addition, much of Katherine's research employs narrative methods as a qualitative methodology. This type of social research is a new and exciting field of social science inquiry.

Oral history methods are another key area of interest and are the focus of her current research. Katherine along with her colleague from the School of Humanities was awarded funding from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland in August 2015 for radio documentary about the lives of people who have lived and worked in the College St. Campus buildings, the Good Shepherd convent and St. Dominic’s building.

Previous pofessional experience is in the area of early childhood care and education, group facilitation and research consultancy.
As a past executive board member of La Leche League of Ireland, she established and delivered training programmes for breastfeeding counsellors nationally. As a board member of La Leche League of Ireland she represented her country at a number of international meetings and delegations She was also a board member of the national Baby Friendly Hospital Initative under the auspices of the HSE.

Book Chapters

Cagney, K. (2013) ‘Gendered Spaces within the Home: An Irish Perspective’ in Rogers, B. L. and Sugiyama, A. (eds.) Space and Place: Diversity in reality, imagination and representation, Oxford: Inter-disciplinary Press.

Conference papers

Cagney, K. (2014) ‘That is my place’- an exploration of family space use at home. Unpublished paper accepted at: The International Foster Care Organisation European Conference 26th to 29th of August 2014, Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford.

Cagney, K. (2014) ‘Christmas, it’s my favourite time of year’: shared family stories of celebrations’ Unpublished paper accepted at 1st Irish Conference on Narrative Inquiry, April 10th 2014, Institute of Technology, Sligo.

Cagney, K. (2011) ‘Gendered spaces within the home; stories from interviews with Irish families’. Conference paper presented at 2nd Global conerence on Space and Place, Interdisciplinary.net Prague, Czech Republic, November 7th 2011

Cagney, K. (2011) ‘Gendered space at home’. Unpublished workshop presented at International Social Care Conference, April 6th 2011, Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford.

Cagney, K. (2011) ‘Continuity and Change: narratives from inside modern Irish families’ Poster presented at Research Day, Waterford Institute of Technology April 13th 2011.

Cagney, K. (2010) ‘Changing Irish Childhoods: Reflexivity in Research with Families’. Unpublished paper presented at Interdepartmental Seminar, March 25th 2010, Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford.

Cagney, K. (2009) ‘Interviewing Irish families: A qualitative study’. Unpublished paper presented at Sociological Association of Ireland Annual Postgraduate Conference, November 7th 2009,National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

Cagney, K. (2009) ‘The Time and Space of Families’ Unpublished poster presented at The Sociological Association of Ireland Annual Conference, May 8th 2009, Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford.

Cagney, K. (2009) ‘Changing Irish Childhoods’ paper presented at Interdepartmental Seminar, June 10th 2009, Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford.

Chartered member of the British Psychological Society.

Member of Division of Academics, Researchers and Teachers in Psychology in the BPS.

Member of the Sociological Association of Ireland.

Member of the Chrildren's Research Network

Member of the Athena Swan Commitee WIT

Member the Analysing Social Change Research Group