I am passionate about women’s empowerment and strongly believe that women have a strong potential to bring about change in our troubled world. I am particularly interested in the role that women play in combating poverty in deprived areas and more generally, in the role they are playing in bringing about more sustainable societies. I am fascinated to observe that very little research has been carried out in Britain on these issues, while in the developing world, the role of women as long been recognised as pivotal to the success of any local or national development project. I develop, in more length, my ideas about sustainability and the necessity to redress the gender deficit in a paper presented at a seminar held on June 23, 2001, at Edinburgh University and titled, “Women’s Movement and Contemporary Scottish Politics”.

My involvement with grassroots women started in a deprived area of Dublin (Ireland) called Ballymun, back in 1996. I was working at a drop-in centre for women called the Drop in Well and also got closely involved with the Ballymun Women’s Resource Centre, a wonderful organisation that saw the empowerment of women as central to the regeneration process of the area.

When I moved to Scotland in 1997, I started to work with two powerful activists, Cathy McCormack and Helen Martin in Easterhouse (Glasgow), looking at establishing a Popular Education Centre in the area. A brilliant chapter in the book, “Popular Education and Social Movements in Scotland today”, edited by J. Crowther, I. Martin and M. Shaw (NIACE, 1999, Leicester), describes Cathy’s and Helen’s action in Easterhouse.

More recent work involved facilitating a training programme with Meridian, a black and ethnic minority women's organisation in Glasgow in 2005. I also supervised one of our Human Ecology students who worked with women on the Isle of Eigg, Scotland, and explored issues of spirituality, community and gender dynamics. She and I run a workshop with the women of Eigg in early December 2006.

At present, I am not involved in specific projects with women's organisations nor individual women in the community. My professional practice is nevertheless strongly rooted in feminism and I teach eco-feminism on the MSc in Human Ecology.