Staff

Karen Molloy, BA (Mod.), PhD, HDipEd

Senior Researcher, Palaeoenvironmental Research Unit

E-mail: Karen Molloy
Phone: +353-91-49 3255

Michael O’Connell, BSc, PhD, DSc, HDipEd, MRIA

Professor emeritus

E-mail: Michael O'Connell
Phone: +353-91-49 2338
Mobile: +353-86-3891 444

For other staff see: School of Geography and Archaeology

Graduate researchers (pollen)

Péter Majkut. Geográfus, Geológia szakirány (Geographer with specialization in Geology) (University of Szeged)

Dr Karen Molloy

Karen Molloy has been involved in palaeoecological research at NUI Galway since the mid 1980s.
A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin (Department of Botany), her PhD research (completed 1989) focussed on Holocene environmental change with particular reference to human impact in western Connemara. Postdoctoral research experience include periods of more than a year at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, and the Free University of Amsterdam where she researched European impact on eastern Australian environments and Irish Late-glacial environments (in the context of a joint NUIG/Free University of Amsterdam project led by M. O'Connell and funded by the EU), respectively. Since returning to NUI Galway in the early 1990s, she has been responsible for detailed pollen analytical investigations at several high profile sites such as Céide Fields, N Mayo, and Mooghaun, SE Co. Clare, as well as being the main pollen analyst for the EU-funded project TIMECHS.
Other research projects include Late-glacial and Holocene climate change in Atlantic Europe based on multiproxy evidence from calcareous lake sediments (funded by the HEA, PRTLI3 programme) and Reconstruction of post-glacial change at Ballinphuill, east Galway (M6 motorway) and Caheraphuca, Crusheen (N18 motorway) (funded by the NRA/Galway County Council) (see Research – Current).
She has assisted with EU networks including  PAN: European Thematic Network on Cultural Landscapes and their Ecosystems (EU 5^th Framework Programme, Thematic Network; Contract No. EVK2-CT-2002-20011 PAN; Nov. 2002-Oct. 2005) and ECL ( European Cultural Landscapes; a CULTURE 2000 network).

She has assisted with research supervision at all levels including undergraduate final year research projects, and MSc and PhD projects.

She has contributed at various times to the teaching programmes in Botany and Archaeology. 

At present she contributes to undergraduate courses in the School of Geography and Archaeology and also the MA postgraduate degree in Landscape Archaeology.

Professor Michael O’Connell

Michael O’Connell was the founder and former director of the Palaeoenvironmental Research Unit (PRU).
He retired in January 2011. As Professor emeritus he continues to research in the PRU.

As a member of the College of Science, he contributed to teaching programmes (general topics, ecology and palaeoecology) in Biology, Botany and Environmental Science. He also contributed to the MA Landscape Archaeology course in the College of Arts. In the period 2003-August 2005, he served as Head of the Department of Botany.

While his research has been mainly into Late-glacial and Holocene environmental change in western Ireland, he has also researched and lectured abroad, mainly in Germany.
In 1982/83, he carried out pollen analytical investigations in East Friesia (Ostfriesland) while holding an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship at the Institut für historische Küstenforschung, Wilhelmshaven.
For the academic year 1999/2000, he served as a DAAD-supported Guest Professor at the Institut für Geobotanik, Universität Hannover. 
1997: Visiting Professor at the Department of Geography, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, PR China. 
2011: Six-month research visit to the Deutsches GeoforschungsZentrum (GFZ), Potsdam (Section 5.2, Climate Dynamics and Landscape Evolution; leader: Professor Dr Achim Brauer).

Distinctions:
Elected member of Royal Irish Academy, 1996.
Awarded higher doctorate (DSc) in 2009 by the National University of Ireland on the basis of published works.

Postgraduate supervision
Supervised, with the assistance of K. Molloy, eleven PhD and eight MSc these (see  research theses).

Editorial responsibilities
Joint copy-editor of Vegetation History and Archaeobotany  from 1991–2002; since 2002 member of the Editorial Board.

Péter Majkut

Registered for PhD degree in College of Science, NUI Galway (October 2009). Recipient of an IRCSET PhD Scholarship.

Title of PhD: Palaeoecological investigations of small-basin bogs in east Galway: towards reconstructing long-term environmental change with reference to human impact and climate change in mid-western Ireland

The research aims at elucidating long-term woodland dynamics and human impact at fine-scale spatial and temporal resolutions in east Galway. It complements investigations already carried out in the region in the context of National Roads Authority (NRA)/Galway County Council-funded palaeoecological research (cf. Molloy et al. 2010; Overland and O’Connell 2010).

E-mail: Péter Majkut
Phone: +353-91-49 2674

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