HEA Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Spotlight Series – Trinity College Dublin

A Framework to Support Curriculum Design for ESD – facilitating the embedding of ESD into the Trinity Curriculum
Dr Caitríona Ní Shé, Academic Developer, Centre for Academic Practice

Caitríona’s role in Academic Practice involves the development and delivery of evidence based professional development for academic staff within Trinity, and contributing to funded projects on educational developments, such as Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Caitríona has worked in higher education across a variety of roles since 2008. Her most recent prior role was as an Education Developer for Professional Development in the National Forum, she managed and evaluated the roll out of the National Forum’s suite of digitally badged professional development courses and supported the upgrading of the Open Courses platform. Prior to this, Caitríona designed, developed and implemented a short course for online educators as part of the #openteach project, led by DCU. In 2021 Caitríona completed her PhD on the use of technology-enhanced resources to support formative assessment in undergraduate Mathematics. Her current work is focused on curriculum design, encompassing aspects such as sustainability in the curriculum.

Enacting Education for Sustainable Development in Trinity Business School
Dr Cicely Roche and Dr Norah Campbell

Dr Cicely Roche, Associate Professor in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Fellow in Education for Sustainable Development

Cicely’s key expertise is the design of curriculum to drive development of moral reasoning competencies, i.e. abilities underpinning decision-making through ambiguity in an ethically defensible manner. Her research also explores professional identity formation, ePortfolio for experiential learning, and developmental approaches to curriculum design in pharmacy-specific interprofessional and/or cross-institutional contexts. Over the past two years, Cicely has been part of the ESD team at Trinity, working on initiatives to support the University’s transition to achieve its strategic vision for ESD. Her role with Academic Practice addresses staff development in Reflection and Programme-focused approaches to assessment.

Dr Norah Campbell, Associate Professor, Trinity Business School

Norah is a lecturer in critical marketing. Her teaching is in management theory, and science and technology studies. Her research interests are in nano-bio-info-cogno markets, climate change, and the food industry. This work has been published in both science journals (Nature Nanotechnology) and social science journals (Science, Technology and Human Values).

A Roadmap to Inform and Track Trinity’s ESD Journey
Dr John Gallagher, Associate Professor, Department of Civil, Structural & Environmental Engineering

John is an Associate Professor in Environmental Systems Modelling in the School of Engineering, Director of TrinityHaus, a Trinity Research Centre, and Course Director for the new MSc in Climate Adaptation Engineering. In his 15 years as a researcher, sustainability has been central to his work, from air pollution and nature-based solutions to low-carbon and resource-efficient engineering systems, his teaching has reflected an approach to empower students with the knowledge and competencies to tackle the real-world challenges facing this planet. Over the past two years, John has been part of the ESD team at Trinity, working on initiatives to support the University’s transition to achieve its strategic vision for ESD. One such task is to benchmark current programmes, to provide an understanding of current performance, and direction for the future.

Music and Climate: A Case Study in Ecomusicological Pedagogy
Dr Jonathan Hodgers, Lecturer, Department of Music, School of Creative Arts

Jonathan is a lecturer specialising in 20th-century music, with a particular emphasis on popular and vernacular traditions, as well as music’s impact on the environment. He earned his PhD in Music from Trinity College Dublin in 2014, where his dissertation, Dylan in Cinema, explored Bob Dylan’s influence on film. His monograph, Bob Dylan on Film: The Intersection of Music and Visuals, was published by Routledge in 2024. He is an editorial board member of the biannual journal The Dylan Review. In addition to his work on Dylan, he has also contributed to research on student data as a strategic resource and graduate employability. Jonathan is currently a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Music and was recently seconded to develop Trinity’s Education for Sustainable Development programme.