Stephen Gallagher and Shane Kilcommins posing for a photo with the PVAA award.

Shane Kilcommins posing for a group photo outside Plassey House with all successful PVAA nominees.

Congratulations to our very own Professor Stephen Gallagher for winning the President’s Values in Action Award for Exceptional Colleague! 🎉 Stephen, alongside the other successful nominees, was presented with the award by President Shane Kilcommins on April 16th.

#PsychologyatUL #PVAA

Group of psychology students at flower wall

Jennifer McMahon, Stephen Gallagher, Sandra O Brien

Group of psychology students enjoying meal

On March 12th the Psychology Ball 26' was held in the Castletroy Park hotel. Congratulations to the committee on organising a great night 🎉🎉🤵🏻💃

#studyatUL

Photo of UL Team C

Best of luck to Psychology Masters students Jordan Mangan and Emily Scally who will be representing UL today as members of Team C in the National AIPEC challenge in RCSI. 🎉

Team C previously won the Internal UL competition which took place on 25/02/2026.

#StudyAtUL #StayCurious

Photo of Dr Brian Carson, Dr Ross Higgins, Luke Slattery, Kara McLoughlin , Leianna Padgett, Ger Downes, and Dr Ronan Courtney.

Congratulations to Luke Slattery, a third-year Structured PhD Psychology student, who was awarded first prize in the Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) – EHS Faculty Heat that took place on 25/03/26. 🎉🎉

#3MT #ResearchImpact #StayCurious #ResearchAtUL

Building Capacity for Evidence Synthesis – a showcase of opportunities Building capacity for Evidence Synthesis (Scoping, Integrative, Rapid, Systematic literature reviews)

Research Week Event: Building Capacity for Evidence Synthesis – a showcase of opportunities. Monday April 27th, 11am – 12:30pm.

www.eventbrite.ie/e/building-c...

#PsychologyResearch #StudyAtUL #StayCurious #ResearchWeek

Photo of Mark McCann.

All are welcome to attend an online presentation on Monday 23/3 at 1pm by Dr Mark McCann, University of Glasgow, UK

You can find out more about Dr McCann's work at: www.gla.ac.uk/schools/heal...

To access the meeting, email maeve.maguire@ul.ie

#PsychologyResearch #youthmentalhealth

Patricia Cross at PSI Careers in Maynooth Uni

Our Psychology Department was represented at the 21st All Ireland Psychology Careers Event by Masters Student, Patricia Cross on March 7th in Maynooth University .
#StudyAtUL #StayCurious #Psychology #PSICareers

Group photo of Finn Lannon, Jenny Roth, Eric Igou, Prof. Rosa Rodriguez Bailón and Dr. Sarah Jay

Congratulations to Dr. Finn Lannon who passed his PhD viva on 19 February. Finn’s thesis, entitled “Unequal Action: Economic Inequality and Collective Action Intentions”, was examined by Prof. Rosa Rodriguez Bailón and Dr. Sarah Jay. His Research was supervised by Dr. Jenny Roth and Prof Eric Igou.

Final Year student Oisín Lane is recruiting participants aged 18-30 for a 10-minute study about engaging educational games. A physical keyboard is needed to complete this study. To participate, go to unioflimerick.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Dr András Vörös is an Associate Professor in Quantitative Methods at the School of Social Policy and Society, University of Birmingham, UK. For more information see www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profil...

Dr András Vörös

All are welcome to attend a presentation by our Invited Speaker
Dr András Vörös, University of Birmingham, UK in E1-022, Monday 2nd March, 1pm
‘Social contagion or behaviour spillover? The dynamics of multiple health behaviours and social networks’

#SocialContagion #SocialNetworks #SocialInfluence

Rebekka Kesberg is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex. For more information see profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p525373-rebe...

Social media 'well down the list' of factors impacting youth mental health, experts say Placing blame on social media distracts from 'more fundamental societal issues' causing mental health issues among young people

In the Irish Examiner, Dr Ruth Melia and Dr Daragh Bradshaw from UL's Department of Psychology discuss the proposed blanket social media ban for under-16s.

Read on: www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41...

#StudyAtUL #StayCurious @ulpsych.bsky.social

Dr. Rebekka Kesberg

Join us for an online presentation by Dr Rebekka Kesberg, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK on MS Teams, Monday 23/2/26 at 1pm

Dr. Kesberg will talk about ‘The Democratic Double Standard: Why Some Political Attacks Seem More Acceptable Than Others’

To access the meeting, email maeve.maguire@ul.ie

Final Year student Orlaith Condren is recruiting participants for a 15-minute online study exploring the relationship between exposure to mental health content online and a tendency to self-diagnose. To participate, go to unioflimerick.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

This presentation will take place at 1pm, rather than 11am as stated in the original post

For more information on Chloe's work, go to pure.ul.ie/en/persons/c...

Dr Chloe Boyle

All are welcome to attend an in-person presentation on Tuesday 17th February at 11am in E1-022 by our own Dr Chloe Boyle

Chloe will be around for coffee/tea afterwards to discuss and connect!

#PsychoNeuroImmunology #PsychologyResearch #StayCurious

New from Alistair Nightingale and Sarah Jay of @ulpsych.bsky.social . A nuanced examination of the rhetorical justifications used by protestors against the accommodation of asylum seekers at a rural Irish hotel, and how such protesters seek to inoculate themselves against accusations of prejudice.

Christmas jumpers for Jigsaw fundraiser

Christmas jumpers for Jigsaw fundraiser

Before the break, we raised over €400 for our Christmas Jumpers for Jigsaw fundraiser: www.idonate.ie/fundraiser/d....

Thank you to our Faculty, Staff and Students for supporting such a worthy cause!

If you want to know more about Jigsaw, go to jigsaw.ie/location/lim...

Final Year student Vicky O’Connell is recruiting undergraduate participants for a study examining the impact of volunteering on perceived employability. The study takes 10 minutes. To participate, go to: unioflimerick.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

To find out more about our speakers, go to:

www.uni-siegen.de/lwf/departme...

flavioazevedo.com/about

#Conservatism #JingleJangle #Replication #LLM #Embeddings

Dr. Alexandra Zapko-Willmes

Professor Flavio Azevedo

Join us Monday 9th Feb at 1pm for a presentation on Measuring Ideology: Current Practices, Its Consequences, and Recommendations by Alexandra Zapko-Willmes, University of Siegen & Flávio Azevedo @flavioazevedo.bsky.social, Utrecht University

To access the meeting, email maeve.maguire@ul.ie

The Structure of Psychopathology on Reddit: Network Analysis of Mental Health Communities in Relation to the ICD Diagnostic System Background: Social media platforms such as Reddit have become important spaces where individuals articulate their distress, seek support, and explore alternative ways of understanding mental health ou...

www.jmir.org/2026/1/e80958/

Network Based on Diagnostic Criteria (ICD-10)
Visualizes the co-diagnosis network derived from symptom-based similarity of disorders.
Interactive: ouestware.gitlab.io/retina/beta/...
Gist: gist.github.com/boevkoski/44...

Reddit Network of Psychopathology – Negative Associations
Shows significant under-representation of shared users between disorder communities.
Interactive: ouestware.gitlab.io/retina/beta/...
Gist: gist.github.com/boevkoski/4b...

Interactive versions of the three main networks are available:
Reddit Network of Psychopathology (Positive Associations)
Displays statistically significant co-posting links between disorder-specific communities.
Interactive: ouestware.gitlab.io/retina/beta/...
Gist: gist.github.com/boevkoski/29...

The results reveal substantial structural differences between associations emerging from Reddit and ICD. At the same time, both networks display a highly interconnected structure, empirically reinforcing the need to rethink and refactor psychiatric nosology.

Read more here: lnkd.in/dRQ_D9nu

In short, we construct a Reddit-based network of 545K user accounts seeking support across mental health subreddits and compare its structure to that defined by formal diagnostic criteria.

We use network analysis to study diagnostic boundaries, transdiagnostic patterns, and tunnel visioning by examining connections within and across diagnostic categories for mental and behavioral disorders in the International Classification of Diseases.