Our faculty The Department is known for applied economics and public policy research. Individual faculty members’ research interests and publications are shown on their faculty pages.  

Faculty research specialisms span major areas of economics and include economic integration, ecological economics, economics of tourism, technical efficiency in health care, smart cities, economics of higher education, enterprise growth, development and policy, macroeconomics, economics of innovation, empirical microeconomics, public sector economics, infrastructure and regulation, economics of the tourism industry, applied microeconomics and micro econometrics. 

Research Funding Our faculty have been successful in securing competitive funding from Horizon 2020, the Irish Research Council, Science Foundation Ireland, the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, Tourism Ireland, the Health Research Board, and more. For details of individual research awards, see our faculty’s individual pages.  

PhD Students. Our department is incredibly proud of the PhD students we have graduated. They become academics publishing in top journals in their fields, policy makers themselves, and have made significant contributions in business. Here are just a few of the many examples our excellent students.  

  • Dr Helen McGuirk (PhD, 2015) won Irish Research Council-funded PhD- and Postdoctoral- fellowships, currently Head of the Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence, Munster Technological University, Cork, Ireland. 

  • Dr Vincent O’Sullivan, (PhD, 2015) European Commission, an adviser to multiple policy makers.   

The National Centre for Tourism Policy Studies was established in 1994 and more information can be found here.