Research and Innovation at Maynooth

Maynooth University is a research-intensive university and, as such, research and scholarship are fundamental to our mission: research contributes to the advancement of human knowledge and understanding, addresses major societal challenges, infuses our teaching and enthuses our students.


Basic and fundamental research across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences are central to the purpose of the University and are the wellspring from which application and utility flow. We are guided in our research strategy by national research and innovation priorities, the grand challenges identified by the European Union, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. While there is an appropriate emphasis on major collaborative programmes, we recognise that much of the scholarly work of the University is advanced by individuals and small groups funded from diverse sources. Equally, research that genuinely engages with communities and actors beyond the University, for societal benefit, is a recognised hallmark of Maynooth University. Engaged research can be described as a wide range of rigorous research approaches and methodologies that share a common interest in collaborative engagement with the community and aim to improve, understand or investigate an issue of public interest or concern and significant societal questions and problems.

The overall quality and impact of our scholarly work is excellent by national and international standards, but also has a character specific to the University.  Our diverse disciplinary strengths across science, social science, engineering and humanities—combined with our commitment to interdisciplinarity, collaboration, engagement and partnership—mean that Maynooth University excels in a number of important areas of research with significant global impact. These include climate change; artificial intelligence; life sciences; and issues of societal cohesion and division.

We are now sharpening our attention as a community to issues that will shape our world in the middle part of this century. Increasingly, these exist at the intersection of science, technology, society and the humanities, and these will be areas in which Maynooth aims to make a strong and distinctive contribution. Working closely with public and enterprise partners will be important in achieving success. 

As a scholarly community in the 21st century, we now work in diverse ways to inquire and discover, to create, conserve, disseminate and apply knowledge, to prepare the researchers of tomorrow and to engage with the problems and challenges that face modern society. We bring our scholarly expertise to bear on key questions for our age, and are proud that our research informs the teaching we provide at all levels.
 

Supported by

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
European Regional Development Fund
 
Enterprise Ireland