Head of Policy and Strategic Planning, Higher Education Authority (HEA), Ireland.

Fix the system - not women: gender equality in Irish Higher Education
Parallel: Transforming organizational structures, practices, and working conditions in a systematic way

Dr Gemma Irvine is currently Head of Policy and Strategic Planning in the Higher Education Authority (HEA) in Ireland. She completed her PhD in Neuroscience in New Zealand before moving to Ireland in 2004 to work as a Research Fellow in Trinity College Dublin. In 2007 she moved to the HEA to coordinate the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI), and was the Irish National Delegate for ‘Research Infrastructures’ in the FP7 EU Programme. In 2012, Dr Irvine coordinated the operational merger of IRCHSS and IRCSET into the Irish Research Council (IRC), becoming the Assistant Director of the IRC and the Irish National Delegate for SSH in H2020. 

Dr Irvine initiated the development of a gender action plan for the IRC, the first for a research funding agency in Ireland, and was a partner in the FP7 funded GENDER-NET. Most recently she worked with Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, former European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science from 2010 to 2014, on the National Review of Gender Equality in Irish Higher Education Institutions.