Academic biography

Sylwia Kazmierczak-Murray is an Assistant Professor in the School of Inclusive and Special Education. She has wide and diverse experience of working towards improving outcomes for children and young people in Ireland.

Prior to joining academia full-time, for 15 years, within Tusla Education Support Service, she led the development and implementation of a range of prevention and implementation programmes across 10 DEIS (designated as disadvantaged) primary and post-primary schools, supporting educational and socioemotional outcomes for children and young people who are most at risk of exclusion from formal education. From this role, she was seconded to a national role in Tusla Education Support Service to support the scale-up and adaptation of a LifeSkills Programme across 120+ primary schools in Ireland.

Throughout her career, she worked with stakeholders from across the education system, and across sectors and disciplines, establishing and implementing many intersectoral initiatives, for example Speech and Language Therapy in Schools Project in collaboration with Trinity College and HSE Primary Care. Sylwia has dual qualifications in both Education (PhD, DCU) and Health (CORU registered Speech and Language Therapist). She is a Secretary of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Irish Association of Speech and Language Therapists (IASLT) and a member of the IASLT subgroup working towards establishing an IASLT SIG in Education. 

Sylwia is a member of the DCU Educational Disadvantage Centre and DCU Centre for Inclusive Pedagogy. Her research has been funded by Department of Education; Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth; Tusla Education Support Service; Childhood Development Initiative; and Research Ireland (previously Science Foundation). In 2024, for her work leading the development of national guidance on Participation of Disabled Children and Young People, Sylwia received DCU President’s Award for Engagement (team award).

At University level, Sylwia is a member of the Civic Engagement Forum and a member of Faculty Research Ethics Committee (F-REC; Institute of Education). At European level, she co-chairs a working group of the European Implementation Collaborative (EIC) on Implementation in formal and non-formal Education. She is also a member of Membership subcommittee of the Global Implementation Society (GIS) and affiliate member of Centre for Implementation Research at University of Limerick. She holds a postgraduate qualification in Implementation Science (TCD) and has a genuine interest in addressing the ‘implementation gap’ in education, knowledge translation, evaluations of the processes by which outcomes are achieved, and an overall analysis of implementation structures, barriers, and enablers.

In the School of Inclusive and Special Education, she teaches across a range of postgraduate programmes, including Master of Education in Specific Learning Difficulties (Dyslexia) (MEdSpLD), Graduate Diploma in Inclusive and Special Education (GDISE), Professional Diploma in Inclusive and Special Education (DISE), and at doctoral level. In 2024, she was nominated for DCU President's Award for Teaching Excellence (team award).