Mary McDermott is a feminist philosopher, analyst, radical educator and activist. She has a particular interest in the intersection between personal change and social change. She has worked across the university, NGO and community sectors to generate dialogue, learning and engagement for the last 30 years.
Within the university sector she developed and taught post-graduate courses in feminist and queer theories, epistemologies, philosophies of science, and, science and technology studies. She is particularly interested in cross-disciplinary work. Mary is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork.
Within the NGO sector she works as a policy analyst on a range of policy areas, working to create dialogue and developing critical meta-frameworks which facilitate cross-sectoral understanding and collective action on persistent social difficulties.
Within the community and voluntary sector she works as a consultant educational mentor with various projects to assess, establish and teach educational programmes.
Her years working in community development, both in the Caribbean and Ireland, feed into her activist focus. She co-published an international special issue of the Community Development Journal on “The Commons” from UCC. She was a coordinator on the 2015 YESBus Campaign for the Marriage Equality Campaign, organising the Bus operations and logistics, and travelling with the YESBus teams throughout the country.
