Bríd O Brien (INOU) Irish National Organisation of The Unemployed

Bríd is the INOU’s Head of Policy and Media and plays a key role in formulating and developing INOU policy on unemployment, social welfare and the development of an inclusive and equitable labour market. Bríd represents the INOU in social partnership and other structures including the Labour Market Council which was established in September 2013. She is also a member of the INOU’s Senior Management Team and acts as the media spokesperson.

Bríd was appointed to the Council of the Economics and Social Research Institute in September 2012; and is a member of RTE’s Audience Council since May 2011. On behalf of the INOU Bríd works with colleagues in the Community and Voluntary Sector on issues of socio-economic justice; and is one of the Community and Voluntary Pillar representatives on the National Economic and Social Council.

Dr. Kylie Jarrett. Department of Media Studies (Maynooth University)

Kylie co-ordinates the BA Digital Media programme and teach modules related to digital media, gender and political economy in Maynooth. Her research area is the political economy of digital media and in particular the commercial Web and has published extensively about various commercial platforms including eBay, Facebook and Google. With colleagues Ken Hillis and Michael Petit, she has exploredthe commercial search industry, published in the book Google and the Culture of Search (Routledge, 2013). She is also author of Feminism, Labour and Digital Media: The Digital Housewife (Routledge, 2016) applying Marxist feminist theories of domestic work to understand the practice of consumer labour. 

Dr. Conor Mc Garrigle. Department of Fine Art (DIT) 

Conor McGarrigle is an artist, researcher and lecturer in Fine Art New Media. A graduate of UCD (BSc) and NCAD (MFA), he received his PhD through practice from DIT in 2012.

His practice is characterised by urban interventions mediated through digital technologies and data-driven explorations of networked social practices and he has exhibited extensively internationally .His practice-based research examines the implications of pervasive networked devices and computational processes through the lens of critical art practice. ] In 2014 he was the recipient of the Leonardo Award for Excellence for his article “Augmented Resistance: The Possibilities for AR and Data Driven Art” published in Leonardo Electronic Almanac.

Deirdre Garvey CEO The Wheel

Deirdre Garvey is the founding Chief Executive Officer of The Wheel and since November 2000 has overseen The Wheel’s establishment and growth to the national network of several thousands it is today with over 1,300 member organisations of the community and voluntary sector.

In The Wheel’s representational capacity, Deirdre has represented the sector’s shared interests on various fora over the years. Previously she has served on the Working Group on ‘Citizen Engagement in Local Government’ (2013); and was also a member of the Steering Group for the European Year of Volunteering 2011 and for the European Year of the Citizen in 2013. Deirdre was a member of the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) from 2003 to 2007, and an alternate member from 2007 – 2010 and a member of the Steering Group for the ‘Towards 2016’ national agreement in relation to Social Partnership from 2006 to 2010.

She was one of 12 people selected to represent the community and voluntary sector on the Implementation and Advisory Group of the Government's White Paper on Supporting Voluntary Activity which existed from 2001 through to April 2007.

She is an in-demand media and public speaker on the topics of excellence in corporate governance in non-profits, charities regulation and best practice in the non-profit sector in general. 

Dr. Eoin Flaherty. School of Sociology (UCD)

Before arriving at UCD, Eoin was a post-doctoral researcher at the National institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (Maynooth University), and two years as lecturer in sociology at Queen's University Belfast. He is interested in some basic questions of collective behavior: how are patterns of inequality formed and maintained, and how do they change over time? He is also interested in how human societies have formed systems of cooperation and managed resources collectively, and whether such systems were more resilient to environmental stress. 

Some recent work on these areas includes:

Flaherty, Eoin (2017) 'Complex inequalities in the age of financialisation: Piketty, Marx, and class-biased power resources' In: Smith, David A. and Langman, Lauren (eds). 21st Century Inequality: Marx, Piketty, and Beyond. Leiden: Brill.

Flaherty, Eoin (2017) 'Doing time series analyses of income inequality - pooled or comparative?' Sage Research Methods Cases.

Flaherty, Eoin (2016) 'Rundale and 19th Century Irish Settlement: System, Space, and Genealogy'. Irish Geography, 48 (2):3-38. 

Flaherty, Eoin (2015) 'Top incomes under finance-driven capitalism, 1990-2010: power resources and regulatory orders'. Socio-Economic Review, 13 (3):417-447.

Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick Head of Research and Dean of GradCAM (DIT)

Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick (doc es lettres) is the Dean of Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (www.gradcam.ie ), Head of Research at the School of Art, Design and Printing, programme chair for Creative Arts Masters Platform at the DIT and is also the director of Research Art, Design and Interdisciplinary Studies (www.radicul.org). He teaches Critical Theory, Philosophy and Aesthetics to undergraduate students at the school and supervises postgraduate students in the college of arts and tourism. Noel has an interest in the interpretation of text and text as performance. His research spans different disciplines and domains from contemporary French philosophy to performance theories and contemporary cultural production.

David Erixon. Head of Innovation - Ulster Bank.