Sustainability Council

Helena Fitzgerald

Head of Societal Engagement

Tel: +353 1 2208574

Helena works as part of the Research, Innovation and External Engagement Directorate. Her team develop new solutions and services that enable impactful collaboration by the university community across TU Dublin's education, research and operations activities, with an objective to create positive societal impact in the Greater Dublin Region.

Passionate about enabling individual and collective creativity, and in engaging society in the full lifecycle of innovation, Helena has extensive experience of community-led open innovation processes and of Living Lab initiation. Prior to this role she contributed as an Assistant Lecturer to the Master of Architecture programme at TU Dublin's School of Architecture, Building & Environment, and while working as a Work Packagae Lead on a €23m Horizon 2020 Smart Cities Lighthouse project at the University of Limerick, led the development of an approach to engaging cross-sectoral stakeholders in the climate-neutral transition that can operate at a city scale.

A registered architect (MRIAI), Helena has worked in the UK, Ireland and France leading project teams in the design and construction of innovative workspaces and ultra-low energy homes. Her research Caring for Place, Constructing Common Worlds was commended in the 2019 RIAI Architecture Awards. She was the recipient of a 2021 Arts Council Architecture Bursary Award, and her installation A Space for Making Good Decisions About Place, featured in the 2022 program at VISUAL, one of Ireland’s leading contemporary art spaces.

She leads the Sustainability Action Lab and Green Campus Living Lab programmes at TU Dublin, both funded through the Education for Sustainable Development strand of the HEA's Strategic Alignment in Teaching and Learning Enhancement (SATLE) fund. She is the Green Campus Living Lab Manager and leads the initiation of the TU Dublin Living Lab .