Meet Our Team
The WWGS Team
Dr. Katie Chapple
Director
Katie was an English and Geography Post-Primary teacher for over 20 years. She has also worked as a consultant and student facilitator with UNICEF, MIC, and the Department of Education. She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Education Leadership, Master of Education and a PhD in eliciting youth voices. Katie has twice been awarded the John Coolahan Research Support Framework bursary, from the Teaching Council of Ireland researching teaching a learning in post-primary. Katie has also worked as a lecturer in the Educational Psychology, Inclusive and Special Education Department in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. In 2022-2023, Katie received the Mary Immaculate College Doctoral Award as recognition for her work and scholarship.
Katie is a member of the Research Engagement Group (REG), a Teaching Council group which works to facilitate teachers in accessing and engaging with research. Katie also hosts a Student Voice Community of Practice in Limerick Education Centre for practitioners interested in amplifying the voices of young people in education settings. As a teacher, Katie was involved in Concern Debating (Adjudicator and Mentor), YSI, Greenschools, Poetry Aloud, Dáil100, TedEd and The Hope Foundation.
Rita Walsh
Deputy Director
Rita has been working for over twelve years in international development and community development in Ireland and has worked directly with schools in the delivery of GCE. She holds an MA in the Sociology of Development and has worked with two international NGOs over the past decade, including working overseas in East Timor in a project delivery capacity. Rita has more recently worked with Self Help Africa in a project support capacity for overseas country programmes, including Ethiopia and Malawi.
Rita has extensive grant management experience having spent five years working with Pobal on the disbursement of grant funding to an extensive range of community and voluntary groups across Ireland.
Eleftheria Papamichali
PROGRAMME ADMINISTRATOR
Eleftheria joined the WWGS team in 2021. Her responsibility as a Programme Administrator for WWGS is to ensure the integrity of the WWGS programme by providing full support across the whole WWGS programme and staff team.
Eleftheria has vast experience in GCE and programme administration.
Mary Byrne (On Leave)
Database Administrator
Mary joined the WWGS team in 2020. Her responsibility as a database administrator for WWGS is to ensure the integrity of the WWGS database. She is involved in the planning and development of the database, as well as in troubleshooting any issues on behalf of the users. She works to ensure that data remains consistent across the database.
Mary has vast experience in database administration.
Lisa Gallagher
Grants and Operations Officer
Lisa holds a PG Diploma in International Development (Maynooth University/ Kimmage). Prior to WWGS, Lisa worked in Plan International. There, she visited programmes in Burkina Faso. She also travelled to Uganda in 2016 with Nurture Africa. Lisa formerly worked in Financial Services. She also holds a Business Studies Degree (B.Sc.Mgmt).
In WWGS, Lisa coordinates the NGO/ Network grantees and grant management.
Lisa values the power of GCE/Education to effect positive change, even in small ways. GCE helps us to learn, unlearn, and think critically to tackle the root causes of global issues. Lisa believes engaging learners in local/global issues is key and can benefit the learners, their communities and beyond. Lisa considers care (for people and planet), solidarity and human rights as paramount and values seeing these taught creatively. She’s passionate about seeing GCE made more widely available to learners globally.
Fiona O’Shea
Resource and Curriculum Officer
Fiona joined the WWGS team in 2023 with over 15 years’ experience as an educator in primary, post-primary and third level settings. She holds a PhD in Children and Youth Studies from UCD; Fiona’s PhD thesis explored Irish children and young people’s experiences of lived citizenship across their homes, schools and communities. Central to this was a social justice perspective which built upon the human rights approach in her Masters in Inclusive Education. Fiona has also worked as a researcher with the School of Education in UCD, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, the Centre for Human Rights and Citizenship Education in DCU and the DICE project.
Fiona sees our global relationships of care and compassion with people and with our planet as central to global citizenship education, and is passionate about bringing GCE into the everyday lives of learners, educators and educational settings.
Debbie Thomas
RESOURCE AND CURRICULUM OFFICER
Debbie trained as a BBC radio journalist and lived in Bangladesh and South Africa for ten years, working in radio and written development journalism. She has designed and facilitated GCE workshops for twelve years as part of the WWGS-Poetry Ireland programme, combining her GCE experience with her work as a children’s author. She has published six novels for children and is the writer-in-residence at Crumlin Children’s Hospital Solas School.
Debbie loves to encourage creative thinking and global awareness in a fun, affirming
environment, and sees constantly the power of GCE to enhance empathy, perspective and wellbeing in young people. Volunteering for NGOs based in Nepal and Zambia, she is awed by the values we share, and the diversity we enjoy, across the globe. She loves working with teachers, students and groups in nonformal education to tackle injustice and build a more beautiful planet.
Lizzy Noone
Education Officer (East, based in Dublin)
Lizzy has been working with schools on Global Citizenship Education (GCE) and campaigning for over 25 years. GCE is about learning and doing to make the world a better place for all 8.2 billion people who live on our lovely planet by critically questioning and thinking and looking at systems and structures we have in the world that lead it to being unequal.
Laura Power
Education Officer (South, based in Waterford)
Laura holds an MA in Politics from UCC, with particular expertise in exploring the power of systemic injustices such as gender inequality. Laura’s academic work sparked her continued commitment to encourage others to critically think, explore new perspectives, and reconstruct views.
She has over 9 years’ teaching, facilitation, and programme management experience in the NGO and education sectors.
Laura was awarded a place on the ‘EU India 40 under 40 Young Leader’ list at The European Parliament for her work on building relationships between Ireland and India, and is an alumna of the Washington Ireland Programme for Service and Leadership.
Laura is passionate about GCE; the power of it, and the small yet significant steps that can be taken to help change the world.
Sadhbh Bhreathnach
EDUCATION OFFICER (WEST, BASED IN WICKLOW)
Having grown up in a bilingual household speaking both Irish and English fostered a life-long interest in a broad range of languages for Sadhbh. She has a keen interest in the power of language and communication, and how to harness that power to support young peoples’ education journeys through life.
Sadhbh has an MSc. in Business and I.T. through Gaeilge from DCU and a Higher Teaching and Learning Qualification from IADT. She has lectured on a range of areas from Gaeilge, Second Language Acquisition, Professional Practice, and Leading Inclusive Practice. As the Programme Director of the BA Honours in Montessori Education from 2020 to 2023, she has expertise in managing, delivering, and directing teacher training programmes and has seen empirically the need for education at all levels to embed principles of Global Citizenship Education across the curriculum to develop critical thinking around social and ecological injustices.
She is excited to work as part of a team passionate about providing initiatives that help develop a more informed, empathetic, and equitable global society – bringing about real change at ground level.
Sinéad Hayes
EDUCATION OFFICER (EAST, BASED IN WICKLOW)
Sinéad has an MA in International Development from Maynooth University. Her key focus of study were approaches to learning, sustainability and what drives people to make and create change. She has been working in education, management, public engagement and advocacy since 2015.
Sinéad has vast experience in facilitation and training across sectors. She has worked with schools, businesses, community groups and volunteers to define shared goals and take collective and informed action. Sinéad believes that GCE is for everyone – its methodologies and interconnectedness greatly enhance learning across curricula and create critical and motivated thinkers.
Aoife Rankin (On Leave)
Education Officer (West, based in Galway)
Aoife has over 12 years of teaching experience at post-primary level in Ireland. She holds a BA in International Marketing & Japanese from DCU and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from NUIG. Aoife is a fluent Irish speaker and completed an MA in Teaching Languages through the medium of Irish with NUIG in 2011. She is currently doing an MSc in Education Management & Training (through eLearning) with DCU.
From her professional experience at post-primary level, Aoife considers Global Citizenship Education to be an invaluable area of learning in helping students build an awareness of global issues and nurture in them a deep interest, respect, and desire for positive change in our global community.