Steering Committee

Dr Nita Mishra is a reflective development researcher, practitioner, and occasional lecturer on International Development. Her research focuses on human rights-based approaches to development, feminist methodologies, gender, non-government organisations, environment, and peace studies. 

Nita has worked extensively at grassroots level with civil society organisations, faith-based organisations, and funding bodies in India. She has worked on innumerable research projects housed in organisations including the National Council of Applied Economic Research (Gender and Tobacco), Nehru Memorial Museum Library (Muslim Womens’ Lives), Self Employed Women’s Association and the International Labour Organisation (Women Bidi Workers) in India. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Economic & Political Weekly, European Journal of Development Research, and Policy & Practice. In 2014, Nita received the Strategic Research Fund Award from the Vice President's Office, UCC for crosscutting research in the politics of Poverty, Human Rights, Environment and Sustainable Development. She is currently engaged as a Researcher on a Coalesce project focusing on social inclusion of rural to urban migrants in Hanoi, Vietnam. 

Nita's poetry has been critically acclaimed as the future of Irish feminism. Currently, Nita sits on the Board of Directors of Children’s Rights Alliance, is national coordinator of Academics Stand Against Poverty-Irish Network and is an active member of several Irish community-based organisations. 

Chair of DSAI Steering Committee, Dr Nita Mishra also co-convenes the DSAI Gender Study Group. 

Email: chair@dsaireland.og 

Alison Duffy, FCA. Qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2001 having trained with Grant Thornton. Alison has served as a committee member with CAI publishing committee for eight years and as vice chair on the Dochas Finance, Compliance and Governance working group for several years.

Alison worked in finance in the private sector for twelve years and in the humanitarian and development sector for five years. Alison is currently employed as Compliance and Finance manager in Self Help Africa, a leading international development charity with an expertise in small scale farming and growing family-farm businesses.

Her areas of interest include the future direction of Compliance functions as we consider Culture within organisations and the UN Global Compact Sustainability Initiative, a corporate sustainability initiative.

Angela Veale (PhD, M. Med.Sc. Psych.) is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Psychology, UCC and a child psychotherapist. Her major research themes are: 1.  Psychology of peace & conflict: post-conflict social reintegration of children & families. 2.  Children, Globalisation, Mobility and 'New Migrations' 3.  Psychosocial and psychotherapeutic interventions to support children's psychological wellbeing. As a researcher, she aims to contribute in the space between academic knowledge, policy and practice. Her research and writing takes a socio-cultural and politically situated understanding of the psychological wellbeing of children & families in Ireland and internationally, often using a participatory action research orientation.  She is interested in innovative and mixed research methodologies, in particular working with creative research methods.  She was partner to  the NORFACE funded Transnational Child-Raising between Europe and Africa, and co-director of the Provictimus/Oak Foundation funded project on the social reintegration of young mother's formerly associated with armed groups in Sierra Leone, Liberia and northern Uganda. She is a former Fulbright Scholar. Her research has been funded by Irish Research Council, UCC Strategic Research Fund, Irish Aid, Oak Foundation amongst others.  

Email: A.Veale@ucc.ie

Catherine Corcoran has worked in the development sector for over 30 years with in Ireland and Africa, at management, policy and community levels with CONCERN Worldwide and also in academia at the Technological University of the Shannon. She has led and advised organisations on strategic and community-led planning and provided leadership, research, technical support and advice within challenging contexts, developing and leading consortia and partnerships at an International level. Her PhD research focuses on community-led planning and resilience building.

Sinead is a graduate of Dublin City University (BA Languages and Marketing), University College Cork (BA Honours Geography and Economics), and DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, US (MBA International Business). She has been the International Affairs Manager at Waterford Institute of Technology since 2002, where she and her team have worked to promote Irish education and WIT internationally, to establish a network of international education partners for WIT, and to internationalize the Institute. Prior to this, she was College Lecturer at the Faculty of Commerce, University College Dublin.

She is a graduate of the Honorable Society of the Kings Inns, Dublin, and is interested in all areas of law, and in particular International Law, Human Rights, and Law of the European Union.  She is interested in all areas of International Education and International Relations. 

Mark Garavan is a lecturer on the Applied Social Care programme in the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology. He is the author of Compassionate Activism: An Exploration of Integral Social Care. His PhD research was on Irish environmental activism. He has been Chairperson of Mayo Citizens Information Service and has been a director and trustee for many years of Feasta – the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability. He is also a community activist serving on the Boards of Westport Family Resource Centre, Mayo Travellers Support Group, and Mayo Intercultural Action. He is Chairperson of the Planet Youth Mayo Steering Committee. Mark’s main focus of research is on how to develop community-based responses to current ecological and social crises.

Deirdre joined Plan in July 2017, and has many years’ experience working in the international development sector.  She currently oversees Inclusive Quality Education Programmes in West Africa, funded by Irish Aid and the EU, also a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning and Disability and Inclusion brief as well.

An early posting with VSO as a teacher in China, influenced her career progression; working in project management in Ireland with African students, international development workers, migrant women and asylum seekers.  She spent 6 years in Ethiopia, managing emergency and livelihoods programmes, and working as a gender advisor for fields in East Africa.

Deirdre has a Master’s in Development Studies and also in Management (Community and Voluntary Sector) and has been involved in managing Certificates in Leaders for Change and Project Management at the National College of Ireland.

Séamus O’Gorman is Head of Membership Engagement with Dóchas.  Within Dóchas, he has a particular focus on working with a number of working groups – Small Members Group, Results Working Group, Safeguarding Working Group and Finance, Governance and Compliance Working Groups.

Prior to Dóchas Séamus worked with Misean Cara as Deputy CEO and Head of Funding, with responsibilities for managing support to missionary development projects in Education, Health, Livelihoods, Human Rights and Capacity Building. Before that, he was a member of the Jesuits and worked as a researcher and lecturer on international justice issues, particularly international debt and development. He has Masters Degrees in Development Management, Economics and Theology.

Dr Pieternella Pieterse is a postdoctoral researcher working on COALESCE funded research focusing on infant feeding policy implementation in Malawi, with colleagues from DCU, RCSI in Ireland and KCN in Malawi.

Pieternella has a PhD from the University of Limerick, Department of Politics and Public Administration. She is interested in health systems, health equity, accountability, corruption and gender and focused on the impact of accountability interventions on corruption in primary healthcare in Sierra Leone for her doctoral research.

Pieternella moved to Dublin earlier this year having spent the past 8 years living in Ethiopia and Tanzania, working as a researcher and consultant for research projects and UN agencies such as the Ethiopian Social Accountability Programme; Making all Voices Count (IDS, Sussex University), the World Bank and UNICEF.

In 2019 Pieternella worked with UNICEF and the Ethiopian Ministry of Health to establish a steering group for the improvement of a citizen scorecard tool in health centres nationwide, and she conducted research for UNICEF, with MoH in Ethiopia’s Somali Region, examining health budget decision making and funding flows at district level.

She was the chair of the board for the Hamlin Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa from 2014-2016 and ‘research & evaluation advisory group’ member for the accountability and citizen action organization Twaweza in Dar es Salaam from 2017-2019. As a PhD student, Pieternella benefited greatly from guidance during the DSAI’s first postgraduate training events in 2011 (UL) and 2012 (UCC). She has presented her research at a range of conferences, including several DSAI conferences in recent years. 

Dickson is a PhD student in the Department of Geography of the Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. He holds a master’s degree in Sustainable Environmental Management from the University of Greenwich-UK, and a BA in Geography and Rural Development from the KNUST-Ghana. His PhD research focuses of energy poverty and just transitions.

Dickson has significant experience in environmental resources management, rural development, and poverty alleviation— having worked with an NGO abroad as the Assistant Project Coordinator and Environmental Conservation Officer. He has keen interest in research, international and rural development, poverty, and environmental management.