Rory Hearne

I am currently an Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer in Social Policy in the Department of Applied Social Studies in Maynooth. I teach courses at post-graduate and under-graduate level in social policy, housing policy, human rights and inequality; climate policy and environmental justice, civic engagement and civil society; the changing political economy of the welfare state.

I have researched and published in academic and policy fields of housing and social housing, spatial disadvantage, housing rights, economic inequality, neoliberalism and the welfare state, social justice, and social movements. I have a PhD in political and economic geography from Trinity College Dublin in 2009. My most recent publication is the best-selling, award nominated, Gaffs: Why no one can get a house, and what we can do about it (HarperCollinsIreland, 2022). Fintan O Toole described it as "clear, cogent and persuasive." My previous book, 'Housing Shock: The Irish Housing Crisis and How to Solve it' (Policy Press, 2020) was the first in Ireland to identify the emergence of Generation Rent, the distorting role of global investor funds in Irish housing, the profoundly damaging impact of homelessness on families, and identifying new solutions based on a based human rights vision for Irish housing and a practical policy pathway to ensure affordable, secure, decent quality and environmentally sustainable homes for everyone. It tackles one of the most pressing social crises facing contemporary Ireland. It makes a compelling case for enshrining the Right to Housing in our Constitution. It is written in a highly accessible, passionate way, that details the author’s personal journey from community worker to academic and activist and how his housing story interwove with his commitment and drive to achieve a human right to housing for everyone ins this country. The book is highly inspirational as it is not just as description of the crisis, but also provides direct voices of those affected, outlines solutions and offers pathways for citizens to engage in action to change the situation. In a short space of time the book has made a major contribution to the Irish policy debate on housing and to empowering those affected by the crisis and those trying to change it. The President of Ireland, in recognition of this contribution as a scholarly resource of national importance, invited the author to present the book to him personally in Aras an Uachtarain in June 2021. An academic review in the international journal Critical Social Policy describes the book as “a highly welcome and thoughtful addition to the debate about housing in Ireland, drawing on comparative examples, quantitative and qualitative data, and his engagement with the topic as both researcher and activist to do so”.  While Leilani Farha, Global Director of the Shift and former UN Rapporteur on Adequate Housing 2014-2020, describes the book as providing a really important and insightful contribution to the global debate on financialisation, inequality and the right to housing.” The Irish Times described it as “a valuable book. It is a tool for better understanding our current predicament and what we can do about it”.  In 2011 I published an academic peer reviewed book, ‘Public Private Partnerships in Ireland; Failed experiment or the way forward?’ (Manchester University Press in 2011). 

I have also published in high quality international peer reviewed journals. For example, drawing from praxis-based research on ‘the right to the city’ and human rights based approaches (undertaken as a community worker in Dolphin House, Dublin from 2007 to 2013) I have published in the international Journal of Human Rights Practice, Human Geography, and the Irish Journal of Community Work.  While I have published on my innovative research into new social movements and civil society in Ireland in Interface, and in Geoforum. 

Over 2015-2017, I was a Senior Policy Analyst with the inequality research think tank, TASC where I researched the political economy of economic inequality and the welfare state, with a particular focus on housing, financialisation, social policy and inequality. I was lead author of Cherishing All Equally 2016: Economic Inequality in Ireland and ‘Home or wealth generator? Inequality, financialisation and the Irish Housing crisis’ (TASC, 2017). 

I worked between 2017 and 2018 on the H2020 funded Re-InVEST (Rebuilding an Inclusive, Value-based Europe of Solidarity and Trust through Social Investments) project. It involved research (qualitative and quantitative) into EU and national state social policy (in the water, housing, finance, childcare and early childhood education, labour market, and health sectors) across 13 EU countries. I co-developed, with the Irish Principal Investigator on Re-InVEST, Dr Mary Murphy, the Re-InVEST project’s methodological approach, the Participatory Action Human Rights and Capabilities Approach (PAHRCA), and the PAHRCA Toolkit.  I am also a public intellectual and regularly contribute to discussion of contemporary social, economic and political issues on national media and contribute to public events dealing with these issues.