Calibre of UCD academics?

Dave!

Hey folks,

Just wondering how ye would rate UCD academics in terms of what they contribute to their field by their research, etc.

Oxford has very public and well known academics like Richard Dawkins who's book the Selfish Gene is usually considered to be quite influential in biology. He's obviously very active in the religion debate too.

MIT have Noam Chomsky, who has contributed alot to the field of Linguistics, innateness and the likes.

Have we got any well known academics? Anybody who's research you would consider important?

The only public name I can think of is Terry Dolan, who has a linguistics/etymology slot on the Moncrieff show on Newstalk! Not exactly an amazing contribution though

Red Alert

I think there are a lot of variables which determine how well known popularly somebody is. Some people are academically introverted, others are extroverted. Subject matter is a big determinant also: Psychology is easier to get the public excited about compared to Laplace transforms.

Stepherunie

It is hard to rate.

I mean the easiest way to guage it is to see how many papers they've had published in peer reviewed journals because they are the best journals for there field.

Then you have some academics who are amazing teachers and that woudln't be recognised by there recognition (unless you're Dr. Moynihan who's a legend)

We also have a lot of RIA medal winners and you've gotta be pretty good to get one of those!

Économiste Monétaire

Professor James Heckman, Nobel laureate in Economic Science is Professor of Science and Society at UCD.

ghostchant

Red Alert wrote: »

I think there are a lot of variables which determine how well known popularly somebody is. Some people are academically introverted, others are extroverted. Subject matter is a big determinant also: Psychology is easier to get the public excited about compared to Laplace transforms.

Maybe it's just me, but Laplace transforms excite me a lot more than Psychology ever will!

seraphimvc

all i know is the Conway's institute is pretty famous yes?lots of research there *just guess*

PennyLane

Well, the reason I'm here is one of my professors back at Boston University directed me to Tadhg O'Keeffe, and the archaeology department overall has a pretty excellent reputation even overseas.

Libronerd

Dr Paul Anthony McDermott in the faculty of Law is always on the news, Primetime, radio, etc...genius.

Pride Fighter

Dr. Richard Aldous is always on telly, he wrote that book great Irish speeches.

rain on

Declan Kiberd is pretty well up there in Joyce studies and Irish literature in general.

Breezer

Stepherunie wrote: »

Then you have some academics who are amazing teachers and that woudln't be recognised by there recognition (unless you're Dr. Moynihan who's a legend)

I agree with the point in brackets but what in the name of bejeebus was the first part of that sentence about?

Michael Collins

ghostchant wrote: »

Maybe it's just me, but Laplace transforms excite me a lot more than Psychology ever will!

Nope. Me too. Laplace Transforms Forum + 1

Michael Collins

Pride Fighter wrote: »

Dr. Richard Aldous is always on telly, he wrote that book great Irish speeches.

Yeh. I've seen him walking around campus an awful lot lately. He was quite good on Q & A a couple weeks ago, definately fits the category.

Pride Fighter

Michael Collins wrote: »

Yeh. I've seen him walking around campus an awful lot lately. He was quite good on Q & A a couple weeks ago, definately fits the category.

Apparently the chicks like him as well, I have no idea why.

Stepherunie

Breezer wrote: »

I agree with the point in brackets but what in the name of bejeebus was the first part of that sentence about?

I was tired. yeah yeah, be mean.

boneless

PennyLane wrote: »

Well, the reason I'm here is one of my professors back at Boston University directed me to Tadhg O'Keeffe, and the archaeology department overall has a pretty excellent reputation even overseas.

Tadgh has an amazing rep all right, especially in the USA, among the contemporary and historical archaeologist community.

Graham Warren, of the School of Archaeology as well, has a good solid rep too due to his research digs.

In fact, most of the academic staff in that school are at the cutting edge of research in their areas.

In the School of History I would have to say Tom Bartlett is up there in terms of publication and research.

i71jskz5xu42pb

DaveMcG wrote: »

Just wondering how ye would rate UCD academics in terms of what they contribute to their field by their research, etc.

This is the question you ask

DaveMcG wrote: »

Have we got any well known academics?

But this is the question you seem to want an answer to. Academics are not judged by fame or whatever fleeting understanding the man on the street has of their ideas/books. Radio shows? No. Popularity because of political or religious debates. No.

Fact of the matter is that UCD (or any Uni) could have the best academic in subject matter A (let's say ecomonics). The only people who would really be able to make this call however are people who are really really well versed in A.

Dave!

Leyla Ugly Slug wrote: »

This is the question you ask


But this is the question you seem to want an answer to.

How about you answer both then

edit:

Robert Gerwarth was on the Late Late Show a while ago debating some bloke about Nazi germany

Rosita

Leyla Ugly Slug wrote: »

This is the question you ask


But this is the question you seem to want an answer to. Academics are not judged by fame or whatever fleeting understanding the man on the street has of their ideas/books. Radio shows? No. Popularity because of political or religious debates. No.

Fact of the matter is that UCD (or any Uni) could have the best academic in subject matter A (let's say ecomonics). The only people who would really be able to make this call however are people who are really really well versed in A.

I actually agree with the sentiments here.

It's one thing appearing on Newstalk or "on the telly" but this does not necessarily make you a significant academic.

One would need to be very well versed in specific areas to talk with authority on how much people have published - if we are talking about peer reviewed publications as opposed to what you'll see on Eason's bookshleves.

Within that limitation, I would say that Michael Laffan, Tom Bartlett (History), Declan Kiberd (English) + Terry Dolan (English) for his work on Hiberno-English, Tom Garvin (Politics) and Nicholas Williams, Seosamh Watson, Padraig Breatnach (Irish) would be considered leading people in their fields among academics in this country.

Al_Fernz

Leyla Ugly Slug wrote: »

This is the question you ask


But this is the question you seem to want an answer to. Academics are not judged by fame or whatever fleeting understanding the man on the street has of their ideas/books. Radio shows? No. Popularity because of political or religious debates. No.

Fact of the matter is that UCD (or any Uni) could have the best academic in subject matter A (let's say ecomonics). The only people who would really be able to make this call however are people who are really really well versed in A.

So very very true. Mr. Moore McDowell is probably the most active economics academic in the media. I think he speaks and writes well but he still is only a mister and that dosn't command much respect in academic circles.

gubbie

Michael Collins wrote: »

Nope. Me too. Laplace Transforms Forum + 1

+2

(Excuses for lack of names but ye should know what case I'm on about...) You know that one really really recently, the one where the husband killed his wife and then tried to make it look like she did it and then a guy gave evidence saying that the cable could never have held her weight. Well that guy... professor in Mech eng.

mloc

Prof. Cormac O Grada, very well published in the Economic History area.

stereoroid

There's also the contribution to the business world e.g. the examples reported in this article. The name Timoney will sound very familiar to both past and current UCD Engineering students.

FionnMatthew

1. Richard Dawkins.
This is a problem academic. Yes, he's considered a leading zoologist. Yes, his writings on evolution have been influential. Yes, he's probably the most well-known name associated with the academy these days.

He's also an academic of questionable substance, whose work falls mostly within the sphere of thinly veiled invective against positions he doesn't like. He has a rhetorical turn of phrase that gives his arguments more willful spite than actual merit. He's a blatant self-publicist. His books are popular science books, for the layperson. You can observe how they fall in register too. Controversy sells, and he knows controversy.

There are many, many diverse positions on how evolution happens, and what kind of factors are operative within it, but Dawkins has single handedly made it look as if it is a unified science, with the only controversies coming from people who (he makes it look) are on the fringes, or crackpot intelligent design advocates.

So, in my estimation, Dawkins is a rather poor academic, and not a good example of academic "caliber."

2. Noam Chomsky.

Noam Chomsky is "famous," outside of academic circles, for his political activity, and, more latterly, for his political writings. But he's a linguist. That's something to remember - he's a guy who just happens to be famous for something else.

He's pretty big in the academic community too, but the only reason you hear about him on the news is relatively unrelated.

___________________________________________

I can't speak for the other schools, but the School of Philosophy is a school with a rather good academic profile.

Prof. Baghramian is involved in the academic circles in which most of the great analytic philosophers of the 20th century move, and her personal acquaintance is, I believe, the reason why we had Chomsky visit us two years ago, and why we had Hilary Putnam over last year. That's a direct line to the place where the big guys worked: Quine, Davidson, Rorty, Fodor, etc.

Dr. O'Shea is involved in that circle too, but with a particular part of it, namely the group who are interested in normativity in the philosophies of mind and language: he is responsible for bringing over Prof. Robert Brandom for the recent conference on Normativity on campus, and several big names came over for that: Michael and Meridith Williams, Bill DeVries, etc. These, incidentally, are all philosophers who can claim to be part of the inner circle of Sellarsian philosophers - ex-students of Wilfrid Sellars.

Prof. Dermot Moran is a worldwide authority on phenomenology, having written and edited one of the most popular readers on it. Both he and Baghramian have been invited to China on more than one occasion for their respective expertises.

Richard Kearney is a very big name in continental philosophy and hermeneutics.

Brendan Purcell, a long employee of the School, was one of the philosophical confidants of Eric Voegelin, an obscure though brilliant Austrian political theorist, whose philosophy of history is one of the continental bodies of work we can most expect to see a resurgence of thirty years from now, such is the nature of academic trends.


To be honest, a good guide (but not a conclusive one!) to the academic profile of the university would be to go to the staff pages, and look at their publications, and institutions where they got their degrees and PhDs.