Dr. Stephen Gallagher

Research Interests

My main research interests are on stress and health, with a particular focus on how stress gets inside the body via biobehavioural pathways including immune, hormonal and cardiovascular biomarkers. In terms of stress, I use a variety of paradigms including life events stress (e.g. bereavement), chronic (e.g, caregiving, unemployment and long-term conditions) and acute stress (e.g,. exams and maths tasks) as well as conduct both observational and experimental studies including psychosocial and positive psychology interventions. My lab group (sashlab.com) and our health and psychophysiology laboratory have two experimental testing rooms and a wet-lab. These are equipped with full cardiovascular monitoring equipment with several Dinamaps, and a Finometer Pro which allows for beat-to-beat continuous hemodynamic monitoring. The labs also have plate readers, incubators, centrifuge and the capability to assess a range of hormonal and immune biomarkers and we tend to look at cortisol, DHEA, and secretory immunoglobulin A. Some of the projects I am currently involved with include examining the biological correlates of caregiving and unemployment as well as the stress of bullying in the workplace; other projects are looking at how loneliness and social relationships affect our health via cardiovascular and hormonal interactions. While our interventions focus on improving social relations via gratitude and benefit finding with other studies investigating health behaviour interventions to those managing and living with long-terms conditions (e.g, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis). In terms of collaborations, my group has several local (UL), and national (NUI-G, UCC, MIC, UCD), and international projects (UK, US) that are on-going and we would be keen to develop other collaborations if they fit with our agenda. Thus, feel free to get in touch with me if you think we have shared interests.