IRISH Centre for Rural Transformation and Sustainability (ICERTS)

There is a long tradition of research, teaching and consulting in rural development at NUI, Galway. ICERTS brings together these various strands from the Departments of Economics, Management, Marketing, Political Science and Sociology, Geography, Law and Health Promotion.

The principal objective is to provide top class training in rural development, particularly at the PhD level; to provide funding for PhD students; and to carry out research, which deepens our understanding of rural society and underpins policies addressing critical issues in the transformations of rural communities and their sustainability.

ICERTS has been highly successful in winning research contracts from various funding agencies, in particular the European Commission Framework Programmes, The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Stimulus Programmes, the Higher Education Authority (HEA), PRTLI Programmes and Walsh PhD Fellowships funded by Teagasc.

ICERTS has been successful in the recent HEA PRTLI 4 round  with a Rural Development component, which was part of an NUI, Galway and National Social Science Partnership bid in the area of social innovation and entrepreneurship.   The ICERTS award (approximately Euro 0.5 million) will fund 1 post-doctoral Fellow and 5 PhD students in this research area over a three-year period.

ICERTS, also, recently won a Beaufort Marine Research Award (Euro 2.1 million) for socio-economic research in the Marine area Research Programme .  ICERTS will link with RERC , the Rural Economy Research Centre at Teagasc, and with the Marine Institute in the delivery of this research. It will also link with the Martin Ryan Marine Science Institute , NUI, Galway. The award will immediately fund a Senior Researcher over 7 years and 4 PhD students over 3 years. ICERTS and its local colloborators form a unique research cluster in the socio-economic marine research area.