Kathryn McGarry is Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Social Studies, Maynooth University. Her research interests include gender, risk and social justice, sexuality and critical feminist methodologies.
Kathryn teaches on gender and social policy, critical policy discourse and research for social policy at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
She was awarded an Ussher Fellowship from Trinity College Dublin in 2004 to undertake her PhD studies exploring the experiences of sex working women in Ireland through a phenomenological research design. Over the past 16 years Kathryn has been involved in research, advocacy and street-based outreach with sex workers and she is presently co-chair of the Irish Sex Work Research Network (ISWRN).
Recent projects include a HIV Ireland funded study using a participatory methodology exploring sex worker health and well-being in the context of criminalisation in the Republic of Ireland (McGarry and Ryan, 2020). Kathryn is co-editor of the book ‘Realising Justice for Sex Workers” (FitzGerald and McGarry, 2018) which brings together a number of important contributions on a social justice agenda for sex work research and policy.
Her current research focuses on critical policy analysis and methodologies of and for social justice. She is involved in ongoing research with colleagues and community partners under the Centre for Rights, Recognition and Redistribution with a current project underway on research for social justice.
