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Name: Dr Sarah Knight
Position:
Outreach Office, Environmental
Change Institute, NUI Galway
Contact: sarah.knight@nuigalway.ie
Department:
Environmental Change Institute NUIG(The ECI has over 200 researchers associated with it and acts as umbrella group facilitating collaborations between departments and individual researchers.The Environmental
Change Institute (ECI) at the National University of Ireland, Galway was founded in September 2000
through a commitment of €9.6m in funding from both private sources and Ireland's Higher Education Authority under Cycle II of the Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions (PRTLI). The ECI is a research centre within the Institute for Environmental Studies, a co-operative initiative between the three western Irish seaboard Universities (NUI Galway, UCC and UL), which together form the Atlantic University Alliance -See http://www.nuigalway.ie/eci/ for more details of the ECI)
Biography:
Sarah is the Outreach officer for the ECI. She holds a PhD in Marine Chemistry from NUIG. Whilst doing
her PHD she received a bursary from Forfas to run a ‘Discover Science and Engineering’ themed workshop
in local schools. The interactive workshop she devised focussed on marine pollution. After she finished her
studies she continued with this type of work- bringing science into the community for organisations including the Martin Ryan Marine Science Institute and Bridget’s Garden. She began her work in the ECI firstly on
a part time and now works on a full time basis. Her responsibilities include promoting and raising awareness
of the existence and activities of the ECI, and providing knowledge transfer to the wider community of the
prospects for positive environmental change.
What aspects of Development Education (DE) are included in your work/research?
The outreach work Sarah is involved in is development related with its focus on community based dissemination of knowledge to promote positive sustainable living.
Sarah and her colleagues at the ECI are involved in delivering aspects of the ACCESS Programme that invites selected primary school fifth and sixth class students to spend two weeks of their holidays in a university setting. During the fortnight which is equally divided between sport and educational activities, the students are exposed to many of the subjects that they could opt to study should they progress to third level.
Sarah also sits on the steering committee of the Energy Research Centre, which has a focus on social sustainability and the crosscutting tendencies of the social and economic impacts of energy production. The ECI
acted as the catalyst for the formation of the ERC. http://www.nuigalway.ie/energy/index.html
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Do you have interests or involvement in particular countries or regions?
Sarah stresses that her work concerns topics that begin with the local but impact globally and so her focus is
on educating for positive environmental change in an Irish context. She notes that the research undertaken
under the auspices of the ECI is focussed largely on EU or Irish aspects of global change.
Recent events /Publications
A sample of some of the events she has run or participated in are included here:
November 25, 2007 - Galway Science and Technology Festival.
November 11, 2007 - Sunday Funday, Galway Atlantaquaria.
June 21, 2007 - ECI Research Day, NUI Galway
World Ocean Day, Galway Atlantaquaria
Galway One World Centre "Ruby Room Debates": Climate Change or Climate Chaos?.
Science and Technology Careers Fair, NUI Galway.
Postgradireland Fair, RDS, Dublin.
Public Lecture by Brendan McWilliams, meteorologist and author of daily "Weather Eye" column in the Irish
Times, 'From Elementary Curiousity to Chaos: A Brief History of Weather Forecasting'.
Galway Science and Technology Festival. ECI staff and students and several primary school volunteers from
Galway Educate Together N.S. were busy all day at the ECI stand at the annual Science and Technology Festival at Leisureland, Galway. Visitors to our stand learned how to make their own weather station, what bugs
they can find in their back gardens, how to save energy around the home, and what dinosaur poo looks like!
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