Professor Cahill's project on Freedom of Association was awarded prestigious funding for four years from the Irish Research Council.
Professor Maria Cahill’s project, “Societās: Exploring the Potential of Freedom of Association” was granted a Laureate award by the Irish Research Council. As a Consolidator project, it receives €600,000 funding over four years from 1st September 2022 until 31st August 2026.
IRC Laureate awards are granted to researchers based in Ireland who are pursuing ground-breaking, frontier research and thought leadership across all disciplines.
Societās focuses on the often-overlooked right to freedom of association. The project encompasses a comparative study of the ways in which this right is interpreted in laws and courts around the world, as well as interdisciplinary theory-building which seeks to illuminate the deep purposes of freedom of association by drawing on insights from theories of selfhood and theories of shared agency.
I am honoured to have been selected as an IRC Laureate awardee, and grateful to my colleagues for their support in the development of the project. It is wonderful to have the time and space to delve deeply into freedom of association using insights from other disciplines, and to increase our understanding of the value of this fundamental right.” - Maria Cahill