I am Full Professor of Education in UCD School of Education and Vice Principal for Research, Innovation and Impact in UCD College of Social Sciences and Law. My specialist field is sociology, researching at the intersection of sociologies of education and sociologies of childhood, and the impact of education on society. I am currently leading two large-scale mixed methods longitudinal studies exploring children’s schooling experiences here in Ireland (Children’s School Lives www.cslstudy.ie) and in Sierra Leone (the Safe Learning Study; www.safelearning.ie).