Louise Caffrey
Assistant Professor
Social Studies
Trinity College Dublin
Ireland
Biography
Louise is an Assistant Professor in Social Policy in the School of Social Work and Social Policy at Trinity College Dublin. She holds a PhD in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where she was awarded an LSE PhD Scholarship to undertake her research. Louise also holds a Full Post-Graduate Certificate in Higher Education Teaching (PGCHE) from the LSE, an MSc in Applied Social Research from Trinity College Dublin and a BA (International) in Political Science and History from University College Dublin (UCD). Immediately prior to joining Trinity College Louise worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Division of Health and Social Care, King's College London, and prior to entering academia she worked as a research consultant, delivering numerous reports for government and NGO clients in Ireland and the UK.
Research Interest
Louise's research interests centre on substantive areas of social policy as well as questions of research methodology. Substantively, Louise's research focuses on the challenges of organisational 'complexity', particularly as it relates to organisational safety and policy implementation; theorising service-user engagement in publically funded organisations; and investigating the intended and unintended consequences of public management approaches. Louise's published research has focused on exploring these issues in relation to both children's services and health services. Louise has also published in the areas of child contact, domestic violence, welfare to work policy and gender equity initiatives. Methodologically Louise specialize in conceptual frameworks that seek to address organizational complexity, including systems approaches and Realist Evaluation.
Publications
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Caffrey, L & Munro, E, A Systems Approach to Policy Evaluation, Evaluation
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Murphy, C., Keilthy, P. & Murphy, C. , Lone parents and employment: what are the real issues?, Dublin, One Family/Combat Poverty Agency, 2008
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Murphy, C & Caffrey, L. , Supporting Child Contact: the need for child contact centres in Ireland, Dublin, One Family/Family Support Agency, 2009
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Caffrey, L. , Hearing the Voice of the Child? The role of child contact centres in the family justice system, Child and Family Law Quarterly , 25, (4), 2013
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Adams, M., Caffrey. L. & McKevitt, C. , Barriers and opportunities for enhancing patient recruitment and retention in clinical research: findings from an interview study in an NHS academic health science centre, Health Research Policy and Systems, 13, (8), 2015
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Caffrey, L. , The Importance of Perceived Organisational Goals: A Systems Thinking Approach to Understanding Child Safeguarding in the Context of Domestic Abuse, Child Abuse Review, 2015
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Caffrey, L. (2016) , The BMJs stance on qualitative research is epistemologically naïve, BMJ, 352, 2016
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Caffrey, L., McKevitt, C., & Wolfe, C. , Embedding Research in Health Systems: lessons from complexity theory, Health Research Policy and Systems, 14, (54), 2016,
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Caffrey, L., Wyatt, D., Fudge, N., Mattingley, H., Williamson, C. & McKevitt, C. , Gender Equity Programmes in Academic Medicine: a realist evaluation approach to Athena SWAN processes, BMJ OPEN, 6, (9), 2016
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Love, S., Brown, S., Weir ,C., Harbron, C., Yap, C., Gaschler-Markefski, B., Matcham, J., Caffrey, L., McKevitt, C., Clive, S., Craddock, C., Spicer, J., & Cornelius, V., Embracing model-based designs for dose-finding trials, British Journal of Cancer, 2017, p332 - 339
