Dublin City University
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About the University
DCU is a young, dynamic and ambitious university with a distinctive mission to transform lives and societies through education, research and innovation. Since admitting its first students in 1980, DCU has grown in both student numbers and size and now occupies a 72 acre site in Glasnevin, just north of Dublin city.
To date over 43,000 students have graduated from DCU and are now playing significant roles in enterprise and business globally.
Today, in 2014, DCU delivers more than 120 programmes to over 10,000 students across its four faculties – Humanities and Social Sciences, Science and Health, Engineering and Computing and DCU Business School. DCU’s excellence is recognised internationally and it is ranked among the top 50 Universities worldwide (QS ‘Top 50 under 50’ 2012). In the last eight years, DCU has twice been named Sunday Times ‘University of the Year’.
About the School of Nursing and Human Sciences
As part of the Health4Life research cluster in the School of Nursing and Human Sciences, DCU, Dr. Kate Irving and her team are engaged in a range of dementia research programmes including Dementia prevention/delay (In-MinDD), timely intervention in dementia care (Dem@Care), Actifcare, and a national Dementia training initiative (Elevator) that aims to develop dementia skills capacity in services and communities in Ireland.
About the team
The team is lead by Professor Kate Irving of the School of Nursing and Human Sciences, Dublin City University. Kate has been involved in clinical practice, teaching and research in the dementia field for over 15 years. Kate is the Principal Investigator in a European dementia project, In-MINDD (innovative midlife intervention for dementia deterrence.) She is a partner on a further two European consortiums, Dem@care and Actif-Care (Joint Programme on Neuro Degeneration). Kate is the developer and co-ordinator of the joint HSE/DCU Dementia Champion Programme, the Dublin Northside Alzheimer Café and the Memory Works screening/remediation Clinic in DCU. Mail: kate.irving at dcu.ie
Dr. Patricia Mc Parland is a post doctoral researcher at DCU on the Posadem team. Her motivation to get involved in this field was a very personal one as her mother lived with Alzheimer’s disease for almost twenty years. Prior to this she worked as a counsellor in private practice, having graduated from Queens University Belfast with a Masters in Counselling and Guidance. Patricia’s research interests are in public understandings of dementia and the impact these have on the ways in which society responds to dementia. Before coming to DCU Patricia worked as project manager at Bournemouth University Dementia Institute and she also tutored on the Dementia Masters programme at Stirling University for a number of years.
Dr. Louise Hopper is a post-doctoral researcher in the DCU team of the ACTIFCare project. Louise originally graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a BSc in Computer Science and has since completed a HDip and a PhD in Psychology, also at Trinity College Dublin. Louise has worked as a research assistant on brain health awareness projects in Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, and in addition to the ACTIFCare project she also currently works as a post-doctoral researcher on the European dementia project, Dem@Care (Dementia Ambient Care), and as a volunteer for the Dublin Northside Alzheimer Cafe. Mail: louise.hopper at dcu.ie
Maria Pierce joined the School of Nursing and Human Sciences, Dublin City University in October 2013 from the Living with Dementia programme based in the School of Social Work and Social Policy in Trinity College Dublin. She is currently engaged as a postdoctoral researcher on IN-MINDD (Innovative Midlife Intervention for Dementia Deterrence), an EU-funded project that is developing online tools that can be used to determine the risk of dementia for individual people in midlife and develop prevention strategies to reduce that risk. Maria’s background is in social policy and she has a particular interest in ageing and dementia. She completed a social science degree at the National University of Ireland, Dublin, and holds a PHD in social policy from Trinity College Dublin.
Dublin City University, School of Nursing and Human Sciences, Dublin 9, Ireland
Tel: +353 1 7007985
Fax +47-33332153
Email: kate.irving at dcu.ie
