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College of Business, Public Policy and Law

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions are the European Union’s reference programme for doctoral education and postdoctoral training. The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fund excellent research and innovation and equip researchers at all stages of their career with new knowledge and skills, through mobility across borders and exposure to different sectors and disciplines. MSCA are open to all domains of research and innovation and encourage international cooperation to set-up strategic collaborations.

See below a list of the supervisors particularly interested in hosting MSCA PF candidates.

Name of Supervisor	Research Areas	Proposed Projects	Postdoctoral Fellow Expertise	Additional Information
Dr. Abigail Rekas	My research focuses on copyright law, the arts and access to culture. I currently have four active research streams: archiving and preserving video games; AI and copyright; technology and law; and access to culture for persons with disabilities.	This project examines how contemporary forms of data extraction by AI systems reshape the legal and moral boundaries of consent, ownership, and participation in digital life. As platforms routinely repurpose users’ online traces for machine learning, the question of meaningful consent embedded in terms of service has become a central site of governance. This project approaches this terrain from a socio-legal and tech-policy perspective, treating platform infrastructures as regulatory systems in their own right, ones that perhaps govern ordinary people’s creative and communicative acts without democratic oversight, and avoid the question of meaningful ownership of creative output for ordinary people. Through an EU–US lens (though other perspectives are welcomed), the project interrogates how human rights–based frameworks in Europe interact, and sometimes collide, with the market-centred logic underpinning American approaches to AI training data. Combining normative legal analysis with empirical or policy-oriented work, the research will develop a rights-based framework for data justice that foregrounds user agency, everyday digital experience, and the ethics of participation in AI development. Its aim is to articulate how law might reclaim human dignity and public accountability within the architectures of data-driven governance.	Background in law or policy, with a demonstrated interest in technology, particularly machine learning, deep learning and so-called AI technologies	I am open to a potential MSCA PF candidate varying the project to suit their specific interests and research goals, within the boundaries of non-traditional authorship, users, AI and copyright.
Dr. Maeve O'Rourke	My research focuses on state responsibility for protecting human rights in the field of social care. I am particularly interested in protections from arbitrary detention and torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Much of my research has focused on the Northern/Irish State's responsibility for gross and systematic human rights violations in the 20th century institutional and forced family separation system, and the rights of affected people to cessation of continuing violations and to comprehensive access to justice and reparation. My research also focuses on present-day mistreatment that older people routinely face in relation to care; this is the subject of my most recent monograph, Human Rights and the Care of Older People: Dignity, Vulnerability, and the Anti-Torture Norm (OUP 2024). Keywords: transitional justice, torture, reparation, social care, human rights, older persons, institutional abuse, adoption.
Dr. Roisin Mulgrew	Punishment, Imprisonment, Justice	International Principles of Prison Law and Policy	Prison law, Human rights law, doctrinal and critical legal and rights analysis skills
Dr. Matthew Collins	My research covers topics in applied microeconomics related to human capital, child development and inequalities in both developed and developing countries.			https://sites.google.com/view/matthewcollins-econ/home
Dr. Pierangelo Rosati	Digital Sustainability, Digital Transformation, Blockchain, Hate Speech, Business Analytics	Projects related to the use of digital technologies for sustainability and operational excellence. Quantitative and mixed methods projects are preferred.	Ph.D. in Information Systems or related areas.
Prof. Paddy Gillespie	Health Economics, Health Technology Assessment	Health Economics Evaluation based on Randomised Controlled Trials and/or Decision Analytic Modelling	PhD Health Economics or Health Services Research
Dr. Edel Doherty	Health Economics; Environmental Economics		Economics, econometrics
Prof. Kate Kenny	Whistleblowing in Organizations	Whistleblowing Speak-up Arrangements; Whistleblower Partners and Allies; Democracy, Critique and Whistleblowing; Gender, Intersectionality and Whistleblowing; Digital Responsibility and Whistleblowing; Human Rights, Speech Rights, and Whistleblowing; National Security, Government and Whistleblowing	Literature review, Qualitative and/or Quantitative methods, Conceptual and Theoretical capacity, Experience with academic journal publishing
Dr. Ekaterina Yahyaoui	Public international law, human rights, global democracy, gender, queer theory, feminist legal work, identity, culture, critical legal thinking and history of these areas, law and literature (especially Kafka)	Any project related to the stated research areas will be considered, with clear links in the proposed project to the global/international dimension of any of the topics.
Dr. Charles O'Mahony	Disability law and policy, mental health law and policy, health law	Projects Related to the Implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, International and Comparative Disability Law & Policy	Expertise on disability law and policy, human rights law
Dr. Ciara Smyth	International and EU refugee law, policy and practice and how these areas intersect with international and regional human rights law; human rights implications of the EU Common European Asylum System and how they are adjudicated by the European courts.	Exploring the human rights implications of the normalisation of extraordinary asylum procedures in the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. As Member States prepare to receive the instruments of the new Pact into their domestic legal systems, the project will explore how existing national procedures are being changed, evaluating the changes in light of regional and international human rights law. This may involve exploring a single issue, such as border detention, across all Member States; or exploring several issues, such as border admissibility and border merits procedures, in select Member States.	PhD in a related area of international or EU refugee law
Dr. Rónán Kennedy	Information Technology Law, Regulation of Artificial Intelligence, Environmental Law.	Proposals in any relevant fields are welcome but of particular interest are the use of information and communications technology for environmental regulation, the development of open legal data in Ireland, and the environmental footprint of ICT and AI.
Prof. Roja Fazaeli	Gender, Religion and Human Rights, Middle East, Islam in Europe, Access to Justice.	.		https://www.bilqis.ie/
Dr. Umair ul Hassan	Human-AI collaboration, Data-centric AI, Data Spaces, Collective Intelligence, Information Systems	Investigate utility of human-AI collaboration based on LLMs in legal reasoning, question answering, and other AI tasks.	PhD in Information Systems, Computer Science or related disciplines.	https://www.insight-centre.org/our-team/umair-ul-hassan/
Prof. Kieran Walsh	Ageing, Social Exclusion & Inequity, Work & Retirement, Place and changing contexts, Infrastructures of care and support	We welcome research projects in areas related to Ageing, Social Exclusion & Inequity, Work & Retirement, Place and changing contexts, Infrastructures of care and support	Researchers with relevant social science experience and in particular in relation to ageing and public policy are welcome to apply.	Along with the possibility to join the Institute’s vibrant research environment and benefit from its wide international network, successful candidates will be provided with equipped office space, e-mail and internet access, as well as access to library facilities. The Marie Curie Fellow will have access to the extensive programme of events taking place annually at the Centre (including seminar series, guest lectures and conferences). The University of Galway places a strong focus on providing a supportive environment for its researchers and has a dedicated infrastructure in place to support research and development.
Dr. Mahya Ostovar	Social impact of digital technology, online social movement, online activism, new forms of organising, future of work, process and practice theory.