TU Dublin Researchers Secure New Foundations Awards for Community-Engaged Projects
Research Ireland has announced 63 New Foundations awards, representing a total investment of €754,352 to support community-engaged research across Ireland. The New Foundations programme supports researchers from all disciplines to undertake research, networking, dissemination and capacity-building activities in partnership with community, voluntary, cultural and public bodies, with a strong focus on addressing real-world needs and societal challenges.
Welcoming the announcement, Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, CEO of Research Ireland, said:
The New Foundations programme enables researchers to work in close partnership with communities and public bodies to address a range of complex societal challenges. These awards support early-stage collaborative research, generating knowledge and evidence to inform national policy and deliver meaningful impact for people and communities across Ireland and beyond. I would like to congratulate all the awardees, and I look forward to seeing where their projects lead.
Among the awardees are three projects led by researchers at TU Dublin highlighting the university’s strong commitment to impactful, community-focused research.
Engaging with Men in a Community Setting to Increase Awareness and Understanding of Prostate Cancer and to Explore Men’s Attitudes or Lived Experiences of the Prostate Cancer Continuum: From Testing to Survivorship (Men Engage)
Lead researcher: Professor Fiona Lyng, Centre Manager, Centre for Radiation and Environmental Science (RESC)
The Men Engage project focuses on increasing awareness and understanding of prostate cancer by engaging directly with men in community settings. With one in six men in Ireland expected to be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime, and early detection critical to survival, the project addresses the persistent reluctance among many men to seek testing. Working with Men’s Sheds across Ireland, the research team will explore men’s attitudes and lived experiences of testing, diagnosis, treatment and survivorship. A key outcome will be the co-creation of an accessible resource to demystify prostate cancer, alongside a qualitative study capturing men’s perspectives. Findings will be disseminated to all stakeholders.
The project is a collaboration between TU Dublin researchers (from the Centre for Radiation and Environmental Science - RESC) (Fiona Lyng. Aidan Meade, Ahmed Mahmoud), the Centre for Psychology, Education & Emotional Intelligence (PEEI) (Aiden Carthy) and the Research Engagement and Impact Office (Catherine Bates)) and the Men’s Health Forum in Ireland (Colin Fowler, Finian Murray, Paul Barton), the Irish Men’s Sheds Association (Rebecca McLaughlin, Lorraine Conneely), the Irish Cancer Society (Sarah Tighe) and the National Cancer Control Programme.
Co-Designing Sustainability Education: A Cambodian and Irish Comparative Case Study to Build Accessible, Inclusive & Multilingual Sustainability Education Toolkits for Higher Education.
Lead researcher: Dr Jade Kim, Lecturer in Consumer & Organisational Behaviour, Researcher in EDI and critical management studies and Programme Coordinator for the BSc in Marketing.
Dr Jade Kim’s award supports a unique international collaboration addressing the urgent need for effective sustainability education. The project brings together TU Dublin, the Faculty of Education at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, and NGOs PEPY Empowering Youth and SeeBeyondBorders Ireland. The research will lay the groundwork for a free, online, inclusive and multilingual repository of sustainability teaching resources. Through a comparative case study of higher education institutions in Ireland and Cambodia, the project will investigate how sustainability is currently taught, assess educators’ knowledge, and identify resource gaps. This foundational work aims to ensure that future teaching toolkits are culturally relevant, practical and capable of supporting global educational transformation.
Mekong POLYPHONY: Participatory Observation and Listening for People, Heritage, and Nature.
Lead researcher: Dr Seán O’Leary, Lecturer in the School of Computer Science
Dr Seán O’Leary’s project, Mekong POLYPHONY: Participatory Observation and Listening for People, Heritage, and Nature, takes an innovative approach to environmental and cultural research through sound. Focusing on communities along the Mekong in Laos, the project uses citizen-science workshops and low-cost recording tools to enable local people to document the changing soundscapes of forests, rivers and everyday life. These recordings will be transformed into stories, maps and exhibitions in collaboration with artists and educators, capturing ecological change, displacement and heritage. The project positions listening as a form of empathy and activism, encouraging deeper engagement with environmental justice and cultural connection.
Together, these three TU Dublin projects exemplify the spirit of the New Foundations programme: building meaningful partnerships between academia and communities, generating knowledge rooted in lived experience, and responding directly to pressing social, health, educational and environmental challenges in Ireland and beyond.
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Engaging with Men in a Community Setting to Increase Awareness and Understanding of Prostate Cancer and to Explore Men’s Attitudes or Lived Experiences of the Prostate Cancer Continuum: From Testing to Survivorship (Men Engage) |
Fiona Lyng |
One in six men in Ireland will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime and early detection is key to survival. Many men are reluctant to go for testing. TU Dublin and the Men’s Health Forum of Ireland will engage directly with men in the community to explore men’s attitudes or lived experiences of testing, diagnosis, treatment and survivorship. Key objectives will be to co-create a resource to de-mystify prostate cancer and to conduct a qualitative study capturing men’s attitudes and experiences. These will be rolled out during Men’s Health Week, and findings will be disseminated to all stakeholders. |
€11,999.04 |
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Co-Designing Sustainability Education: A Cambodian and Irish Comparative Case Study to Build Accessible, Inclusive & Multilingual Sustainability Education Toolkits for Higher Education |
Jade Kim |
This project addresses the urgent need for effective sustainability education through a unique collaboration between TU Dublin, the Faculty of Education of the Royal University of Phnom Penh, PEPY Empowering Youth, and SeeBeyondBorders Ireland. It lays the groundwork for a free, online, inclusive, and multilingual repository of teaching resources. Its primary objective is to understand the current sustainability education landscape in both nations. A comparative case study will investigate how educators teach sustainability, assess their knowledge, and identify needed resources. This foundational research will ensure that the future repository is culturally relevant, practical, and truly serves educators' needs for global educational transformation. |
€10,000.00 |
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Mekong POLYPHONY: Participatory Observation and Listening for People, Heritage, and Nature. |
Seán O'Leary |
What if we learned to listen not just to each other, but to the forests, rivers, and skies around us? Mekong Polyphony is a project about sound as witness—of ecological change, of displacement, of everyday life along the Mekong in Laos. Through citizen science workshops and low-cost recording tools, local communities will capture the shifting symphony of their environments. Together with artists and educators, they’ll weave these sounds into stories, maps, and exhibitions. This is education as empathy, activism as deep listening—a call to hear what development often silences, and to imagine futures attuned to justice, care, and connection. |
€10,000.00 |