Assoc ProfessorNessa Winston

Dr. Nessa Winston is Associate Professor in Social Policy in the School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice. She previously worked in the Centre for European Economic and Public Affairs and the Social Science Research Centre in UCD and in the Departments of Sociology, at the University of Toronto and NUI, Maynooth. She is a graduate of Social Science in UCD, and has a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Toronto. Her main research interests relate to housing and community issues and she is currently working on a series of projects relevant to the UN SDGs, especially around sustainable communities, affordable energy and transport. She co-ordinates a work package on energy justice in the Next Generation Energy Systems (NexSys) project , an all-island, multidisciplinary research programme hosted by the UCD Energy Institute in partnership with eight other leading research institutions and funded by Science Foundation Ireland, nine industry co-funding partners and one philanthropic donor. This builds on earlier work on sustainable community regeneration in urban and rural contexts, including research on second and vacant homes and eco-villages. She is also interested in the specific needs of older people, young people, and members of different minority ethnic groups. In 2007 she was awarded a Government of Ireland Fellowship in the Humanities and Social Sciences for research on urban regeneration. She has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Policy Institute at Trinity College Dublin. She directed the Irish strand of an international project on migrants and cultural pluralism, funded by the European Cultural Foundation. She was a member of an EU FP7 research project on inequality (the GINI project) where she focused on housing and the impacts of growing inequalities. She is an active member of the European Network for Housing Researchers, and a coordinator of its Working Group on Housing and Urban Sustainability. In addition, she is the co-founder and member of the Irish Social Policy Association. She is an executive member of the UCD Earth Institute where she co-ordinates Its Sustainable Communities Research theme. Dr. Winston has considerable experience of PhD supervision and welcomes applications for Masters and PhDs in Social Policy, particularly on the following topics: Poverty and social inclusion, including food, fuel/energy and transport poverty; Social Policy and the environment; Sustainable communities, housing and resilience; Alternative approaches to housing provision (e.g. housing co-operatives, co-housing etc); Housing, ageing and older people; Food programmes (food banks, school meals programmes etc)* Quality of life and well-being; eco-social policies; eco-welfare state; UN SDGs. Dr Winston particularly welcomes applications from students from Black and Ethnic Minority (BEM) backgrounds.