Dr. Anne Marie Kavanagh

Anne Marie Kavanagh (PhD, FHEA) teaches and researches in the areas of intercultural education, ethical education, social justice education, anti-racism education, climate justice education, and human rights education.

A former primary teacher, she has worked extensively with undergraduate and postgraduate students, and in-service teachers, principals, and Special Needs Assistants for over two decades.

Recognised nationally and internationally for her expertise in critical and values-based education approaches, she is committed to producing justice-oriented frontier research with socially and pedagogically transformative potential.

Anne Marie's research excellence, leadership skills and sustained publishing record have been repeatedly recognised. Most recently, she was awarded New Foundations funding from Research Ireland along with her colleague Prof Audrey Bryan. Their project, 'Le chéile atáimid', a collaboration between DCU and ETBI focuses on building ETB teachers' capacity to teach for climate justice and sustainability. In 2025, the team she was leading were awarded the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment funded ‘Literature Review on Intercultural Education’. This significant and impactful review directly informs national educational strategy, shaping Ireland's intercultural education across the continuum.

Since 2024, she has been collaborating with partners at Newcastle University and Northumbria University, and with her DCU colleague Prof Audrey Bryan, on a British Academy/Leverhulme-funded interdisciplinary project, ‘Classrooms for Climate Justice’. This project advances knowledge in the under-researched area of climate justice education and has the potential to shape climate justice pedagogy in primary and post-primary schools.

Guided by a commitment to equity and epistemic justice, her research and teaching are progressively engaging with decolonising approaches. These approaches explore how knowledge production can be restructured to acknowledge and value diverse epistemologies and voices historically marginalised within the academy and school curricula. You can hear Anne Marie discuss how educators can decolonise the curriculum and promote social justice here and engage with a powerful interchange she curated focused on challenging academic extractivism and advancing relational research approaches here.

Over the last two decades, Anne Marie's pedagogical and curricular excellence have been recognised at multiple levels. As a student, she won the prestigious Vere Foster Medal (INTO, 2004) for achieving the highest grades in school placement and the curriculum subjects across the three year BEd programme. As a teacher educator, she was voted Lecturer of the Year by the students at St Patrick’s College (Students Union, 2015). Most recently, staff from over 200 ETB primary, post-primary and special schools are engaging in an innovative Professional Development Module that she designed and developed. This ground-breaking e-learning module focuses on advancing school staff’s social class, ethnic and racial literacy.

In 2006, she was awarded the Kellogg's Scholarship and completed an MEd in Education (St. Patrick's College). In 2009, she received the Michael Jordan Fellowship in Education and completed her PhD on Emerging Models of Intercultural Education in Irish Primary Schools in 2013 under the supervision of Prof Fionnuala Waldron and Prof Audrey Bryan.

Anne Marie holds numerous leadership roles at the university, including leading DCU’s work on the Advisory Committee for the Framework for the Recognition of Qualification to Teach Ethical, Multi-Belief and Values Education (Educate Together & ETBI). She is committed to DCU's strategic objective of providing an outstanding student experience and to that end serves as the BEd3 Year Head and as the BEd3 Erasmus Academic Co-ordinator. She is an active member of the University's Research Ethics Committee (REC), the Faculty Research Committee (FRC), the Publication Action Plan sub-committee, and the Faculty Athena Swan Assessment Team. Prior to incorporation, she served on the College Research Ethics Committee at St. Patrick’s College.

She is a member of the steering committee of the DCU Centre for Human Rights and Citizenship Education (CHRCE) and a research fellow at the DCU Anti-Bullying Centre. In 2021, her first co-edited book (with Prof Fionnuala Waldron & Dr Benjamin Mallon) 'Teachingfor Social Justice and Sustainable Development Across the PrimaryCurriculum' was published by Routledge and widely acclaimed as transformative (Irish Educational Studies, Theory & Research in Social Education). President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins who wrote the foreword for the book described it a "powerful instrument" and "invaluable tool...of engaged citizenship, scholarly responsibility and ethical disposition." Her second co-edited book (with Dr Amy Allen & Dr Caitríona Ní Cassaithe) ‘Beyond Single Stories: Changing Narratives for Changing World' was published in 2024 by Information Age Publishing. It was endorsed by Teachers College, Columbia University's Teachers College Record in 2025.