Academic biography

Maria Barry, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the School of STEM Education, Innovation and Global Studies in DCU's IoE.  She is a teacher educator and researcher in the fields of history education and global citizenship education.  Prior to joining DCU, Maria worked in Trócaire's (NGDO) development education team from 2002-2014 and managed the organisation's team, strategy, funding, programmes and research development for seven years.  

Currently, Maria is co-Principal Investigator (co-PI) on the INOVATE project with Dr. Machowska-Kosciak.  Funded through the National Integration Fund 2021-2023, this project seeks to incorporate authentic minority ethnic young people’s voices within teacher education programmes at both pre-service and in-service levels. Maria is also co-PI with a number of DCU colleagues on Global Village's research activities. Two current studies are underway. The first is based on a national survey of Global Citizenship Education and Irish primary teachers. The second is a scoping study on the possibilities and challenges for GCE in Early Childhood Education.

In 2020, Maria completed her PhD fellowship with the Centre for Human Rights & Citizenship Education.  Her doctoral studies focussed on global citizenship education teaching and learning practices in post primary schools.  Other scholarly interests include; dialogue and discussion in the classroom, making connections between history education and citizenship education, student and youth participation and social justice pedagogy.

Maria has served on a number of Boards and committees in the area of history education and development education over 20 years.  At the moment, she and her colleague Dr. Ben Mallon, sit on the Management Committee for Irish Aid's strategic programme for GCE across primary education, Global Village.  This programme is supported and overseen by a consortium of four partners - DCU, the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO), the Irish Primary Principal's Network (IPPN) and Trócaire. In 2016-2017, Maria sat on the NCCA History development group that supported the development of the new junior cycle specification.  She is also a member of the DICE and Ubuntu networks and IDEA.  Maria has worked in partnership with organisations at a European and international level and has traveled in a professional capacity to many countries including Slovenia, Kenya, Guatemala and Ethiopia.

Maria is a co-Director of the Centre for Human Rights and Citizenship Education in DCU's IoE.