Professor Geraldine Mooney Simmie’s inaugural lecture to the University of Limerick

Professor Geraldine Mooney Simmie presented her inaugural lecture at the University of Limerick on Monday 15^th December 2025. The lecture, by special invitation from Professor Deirdre McGrath, Dean of the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences marked the third year of Geraldine’s appointment as Professor of STEM Education in the School of Education and her fifth year as Director of EPI∙STEM The National Centre for STEM Education.

The lecture was formally opened by Professor Paul Conway, Head of the School of Education followed by a welcoming address by Professor Shane Kilcommins, President of the University of Limerick. The lecture provided an opportunity for Professor Mooney Simmie to share something of her background in relation to her passion as an educational researcher in the Cultural Politics of STEM Education and her theorisations of STEM teachers’ identities and practices published in the international literature.

Professor Mooney Simmie grew up in Lisdoonvarna, County Clare, the seventh of a family of nine siblings. Geraldine thanked her parents, Hilda and Stephen Mooney for their values and support and expressed a special word of thanks to Sr Rosarii Mc Guane from Corofin, Co. Clare and Tom Tarpey from Ardrahan, Co. Galway for instilling a lasting love of science, mathematics, music, culture and politics in Mary Immaculate Secondary School. Geraldine went on to thank the former Minister for Education Donagh O’Malley TD for introducing the free education scheme which afforded Geraldine, and her classmates the opportunity to enter the University of Galway. There Geraldine graduated with a degree in chemistry and mathematics and a master’s by research in chemistry before completing the higher diploma in education and becoming a science and mathematics teacher in the Jes (Coláiste Iognáid S.J.) in Galway. Geraldine lives in Furbo, Co. Galway with her husband John and their dog Banjo. Their adult sons and wives, Sean and Sabrina, and Donal and Cienna, live in London.

While dedicated to her role as a science and math teacher in the Jes, Geraldine wrote chemistry and science books and was a member of the Junior Cycle chemistry support team. This was followed by a decade supporting Transition Year in the west of Ireland. This experience awakened a deep understanding of what is meant by a holistic education. It is clearly more than the sum of the parts and more than anything that can be counted and measured. Taking a critical and feminist perspective, Geraldine’s research considers STEM education as an open ethical question concerned as much with the soul project of human development as much as with the relational work in becoming a worker or an active citizen.

This rich experience set the scene for Geraldine’ entry into higher education, and her PhD study in Comparative Policy Education between Ireland and Norway, in relation to science and mathematics teachers’ learning with Dr Seamas Ó’Buachalla, in Trinity College Dublin.

During the last twenty years in UL, Professor Mooney Simmie has produced an impressive collection of substantive academic papers in top international journals, arising from her research work with colleagues in EPI∙STEM, with science and mathematics teachers in Ireland and with international research colleagues.

At her inaugural lecture, Professor Geraldine Mooney Simmie thanked her colleagues in the School of Education and across campus in addition to the intellectual environment in EPI∙STEM The National Centre for STEM Education to engage in cutting-edge research as a policy researcher in STEM education. As Director of EPI∙STEM, Geraldine leads the research work of PhD students and research fellows and is supported in this work by over forty EPI∙STEM affiliates, including student teachers, scientists, mathematicians and engineers in UL, and the wider community of schools, teachers, education centres and local enterprises. In addition to the core team in EPI∙STEM, the centre is supported by three former Directors, Professor John O’Donohue, Professor Sibel Erduran, University of Oxford and Professor Merrilyn Goos, Sunshine Coast University, Australia.

Today, Professor Mooney Simmie also acts as an expert researcher with the European Commission in relation to their new scoping study for Education & Skills for a future green and digital transition in Europe and is the national convenor for the Critical and Feminist Special Interest Group in Ireland with the Educational Studies Association of Ireland (ESAI).

Photograph from left to right:

Professor Paul Conway, Head of the School of Education, Professor Geraldine Mooney Simmie, Professor of STEM Education, Professor Deirdre McGrath, Dean of the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences and Professor Shane Kilcommins, President of the University of Limerick.