Mike FitzGibbon Editor

Jacqui O’Riordan is a lecturer at the School of Applied Social Studies, University Collge Cork, where she works across a broad range of adult education, undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Her research interests embody the activist and academic and focus on a range of issues concerning gender, equality and diversity in local and global contexts. Her research contributions include analyses of aspects of women’s livehihoods; child trafficking; care for children; migrant children’s experiences and interactions of education; community supports for people, younger and older, living with disabilities; as well as the analysis of care and experiences of carers. She is a co–founder of Anti-Deportation Ireland, and has had involvement with migrant and asylum–seeking communities since the 1990s.

Mike FitzGibbon has a background in engineering and in information systems, and began work in development in the early 1990s, later working at the International Famine Centre in UCC and the Higher Education Equality Unit until 2002, working as a development consultant until 2005. Since then, he has lectured on and been a part of the development of the UCC International Development undergraduate degree programme; a joint MSc in Rural Development with universities in Ethiopia; and on UCC’s Masters in Food Security Management programme. He has always had a strong interest in ethics, human rights and development issues, particularly in relation marginalised groups. For the past two decades, he has had a deep involvement with the asylum-seeking and immigrant communities, and help to found Anti-Deportation Ireland, a local movement working with asylum-seekers.