Physical Activity for Health Research Centre (HRI Event)

The panel will provide an update on the excellent and impactful research happening in this research  centre. Panellists include; Professor Catherine Woods, lead of the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre; Dr Brendan O’Keeffe, Lecturer in Health and Physical Education; Professor Elaine Murtagh, Course Director, BSc Physical Education programme, Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences’, Dr Matthew Herring, Lecturer in Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology; Professor Brian Carson, Professor of Exercise Physiology and Postgraduate researchers Daire Fitzmaurice and Tadhg Payne ULMedX 

This event may be recorded for future promotional use by the University of Limerick.

All venues are wheelchair accessible but should you have any specific accessibility queries, please contact us at: Research@ul.ie

Professor Catherine Woods is lead of the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre (www.pafh-ul.ie) at the University of Limerick (UL), and is a member of UL's Health Research Institute (https://www.ul.ie/research/hri). Prof. Woods' research cuts across the HRI themes of lifestyle, health and technology. She enjoys developing and testing theoretically sound interventions to change population levels of physical activity, and seeks better, more systematic methods of bringing research, practice and policy closer together to achieve real and sustainable impact. Prof. Woods believes that physical activity is a best buy for public health as it has the potential to improve health and wellbeing for everyone, irrespective of age, ability or condition.

Professor Woods has led - as Principal or Co-Investigator successful grant applications generating a total income of 14,100,242 (4,070,512 to UL/DCU). Professor Woods has successfully trained 10 PhD and 6 MSc research students, and currently has one research fellow and five post-doctoral researchers, four full-time research assistants and five PhD students within her physical activity for health research team. This team have published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and presented at >30 (inter)national conferences

Dr Brendan O’Keeffe, Lecturer in Health and Physical Education

Brendan is an early career researcher and lecturer in Health and Physical Education in the Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences (PESS) at the University of Limerick. Brendan is actively involved in multiple research projects including, Erasmus+ funded Before Project (co principal investigator), Irish Research Council (Youth-Fit Project) and Sport Ireland CSPPA Steering Committee. Brendan has an established international research network, including ongoing collaborations with the Fitback Europe consortium and the RT4Teens intervention in Australia. Brendan has had multiple collaborations with Dept. of Education on health promotion initiatives in schools and the Professional Development Service for Teachers who have used his research to inform practice in schools. In October of 2022, Brendan was elected Vice-President of the Physical Education Association of Ireland. Brendan’s current and future research interests very much align with both the lifestyle and health (predominantly) and Health Technologies HRI research themes.

Professor Elaine Murtagh is Course Director of the BSc Physical Education programme in the Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences. Elaine was awarded a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (Physical Education) and a PhD from Ulster University. She also holds a Specialist Diploma in Teaching, Learning & Scholarship from the University of Limerick.

Elaine joined UL in March 2020. Prior to this appointment she was a lecturer in Physical Education at Mary Immaculate College (MIC), Limerick from 2008. Elaine also held the post of Athena SWAN Project Director at MIC and led the College's successful application for a Bronze Institutional award.

Elaine is a Steering Committee member of HEPA Europe (WHO Europe network for the promotion of Health-Enhancing Physical Activity).

Dr Matthew Herring joined the PESS faculty in August 2014 as a Lecturer in Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology. His internationally-recognized transdisciplinary research program uses epidemiological, experimental, and mechanistic approaches to better understand the influence of physical activity dose and acute and chronic aerobic, resistance, and non-traditional exercise for anxiety and depression among preclinical and clinical populations, and the psychobiological underpinnings of those relationships. He is Director of the Exercise is Medicine Ireland National Centre, Visiting Research Fellow and Steering Committee Member for The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), Physical Activity Lead for the Healthy UL Framework, Co-Director of Exercise is Medicine On Campus UL, and Co-Investigator in the Physical Activity for Health Research Cluster of the Health Research Institute.

Professor Brian Carson graduated with a first class honours BSc. in Sport Science and Health from the School of Health and Human Performance at Dublin City University in 2005. Brian subsequently undertook a PhD funded by a scholarship from the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) entitled 'The regulation of metabolic gene expression in human skeletal muscle by exercise: the influence of exercise intensity and contraction frequency' which was awarded in 2010. He then was appointed as a postdoctoral researcher funded by Diabetes UK at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at the University of Liverpool where he spent 18 months investigating the intracellular trafficking and release of the adipokine adipokines. From there, Brian joined the team in the Physical Education and Sport Sciences department at the University of Limerick as a lecturer in Exercise Physiology in January 2011 where he is pursuing research into the role of exercise and nutrition in the regulation of metabolism for performance and health.