Dr. Kieran Walsh
(HARC Lead Researcher)
Research Officer Irish Centre for Social Gerontology,
National University of Ireland Galway
Dr Kieran Walsh completed his PhD in 2004 on “The Effects of Nursing Home Institutionalisation on the Cognitive, Sensory and Sensorimotor Abilities of Low Dependency Older Adults” at the University of Limerick (UL).
Since joining ICSG in April 2006 as Research Officer, Kieran has worked on a variety of research projects in the areas of environmental gerontology and infrastructures of care. These have included studies on older adult community and voluntary activity in rural areas, the impact of assistive technology on the lives of older people and the interaction between elements of place, technology and community. Kieran also has responsibility for coordinating the Irish field research in the ‘role of migrant health and social care workers in ageing societies’ cross-national research project, which is a collaborative study involving the ICSG, the University of Oxford (UK), Georgetown University (US) and Ottawa University (Canada). Kieran is the lead researcher and coordinator of the Healthy Ageing in Rural Communities research network.
Kieran’s current research interests include older adult ability functioning and decline, older person-environment congruency with respect to rural/urban community and planned settings, intergenerational relationships and the interaction between migratory and ageing processes for older adult well-being.
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Recent Posts
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Welcome to the Healthy Ageing in Rural Communities (HARC) research network, which is comprised of members of the National University of Ireland Galway, Queens University Belfast, FORUM Letterfrack, the Rural Community Network (RCN) and the Public Health Agency Northern Ireland.
HARC is a cross-border initiative funded by the Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland (CARDI) and seeks to bring together expertise on rurality and ageing from Ireland and Northern Ireland for the purposes of information sharing and the generation of research capacity.
As a part of this process, this web-site has been designed to inform practitioners, policy makers, academics, researchers, and other interested parties of the importance of ageing in rural communities and of the objectives and on-going activities of the HARC research network.
Aim and Objectives
The aim of HARC is to establish an interdisciplinary cross-border research network on healthy ageing in rural communities.The network will draw on the interdisciplinary expertise of academic and stakeholder groups from both the ageing and rural sectors – thereby including both theoretical and applied perspectives and increasing the capacity for rural ageing research in the fields of ageing and rurality in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
HARC has five fundamental objectives, which are as follows;
1. To share existing knowledge on rural ageing in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
2. To enhance the capacity for research on rural healthy ageing in ageing and rural sectors across the island of Ireland.
3. To identify key research questions on healthy ageing in rural communities in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
4. To develop a coordinated interdisciplinary research programme for healthy ageing in rural communities across the island of Ireland.
5. To act as a dissemination and discussion network for future research in the area of healthy rural ageing