Full Professor
Maria's main research areas are Philosophy of Language, Contemporary American Philosophy (Putnam, Davidson, Rorty and Quine), Relativism, Topics in Cognitive Science; and her publications primarily focus on the topic of intractable disagreements in beliefs and values and on Neo-Pragmatism. She was, with the astrophysicist Prof Luke Drury, the Principal Investigator of a research project on peer expert disagreement “When Experts Disagree” (WEXD), funded by the Irish Research Council.
Currently, she is the coordinator and project leader of PERITIA - Policy, Expertise and Trust in Action - a groundbreaking multi-disciplinary pan-EU research project. In the European arena, she has been an active member of three working groups on topics of truth, trust and science with the All-European Academies (ALLEA) and its science and policy mechanism SAPEA.
Internationally, she is a member of the steering committee of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies, a member of the Programme Committee of the 2024 World Congress, and a member of the International Cooperation Committee of the American Philosophical Association.
She was the founder and chairperson of the Society for Women in Philosophy, Ireland (SWIP–I), and has mentored many young female philosophers through the organisation. Despite some recent improvement, only approx 30 per cent of philosophers in universities in Europe and the US are women (a lower percentage at Full Professor level), the fact of which Maria highlights and tries to address through her advocacy and former role as Head of UCD School of Philosophy. Since the launch of SWIP in UCD in 2010, the number of permanent female staff in the school has increased from two to six and they have realised a similar increase in the number of female PhD students.
In addition, Maria is the representative at UCD of the 'Scholars At Risk' network to help academics in need of refuge from dangerous, often conflict-related situations.
Maria was Head of School twice, during which time she helped to establish the UCD Centre for Ethics in Public Life and UCD Newman Centre for Study of Religions. In 2000, she co-founded the first Interdisciplinary Cognitive Science programme in Ireland and continue to act as a co-director.