Head of Law

Email: deirdre.mcgowan@tudublin.ie

Tel: 01 220 5450

Academic and professional qualifications

BCL (Hons), University College Dublin (1990)

Irish qualified solicitor (1994)

Doctor of Philosophy, Maynooth University (2015)

 

Professional experience

Solicitor at M J O’Connor & Company, Wexford (1998 – 2001)

Solicitor at Mary Cowhey & Company, Maynooth (2003 – 2010)

Lecturer, Contract Law and Company Law, Maynooth University (2013 – 2014)

Adjudicator at Private Residential Tenancies Board (2014 - 2018)

Lecturer, Land Law, Equity, Constitutional Law, Athlone Institute of Technology (2014)

Director, North Kildare Citizens Information Service Limited (2004 – 2016)

Assistant Lecturer, Dublin Institute of Technology (2015-2016)

Assistant Head of School of Languages, Law & Social Sciences, TU Dublin (2016- present)

President, Irish Association of Law Teachers (2019)

Membership Secretary, Irish Association of Law Teachers (2020,2021)

Publications

Maebh Harding and Deirdre McGowan (eds) Family Law in Context (2023, Clarus Press)

Deirdre McGowan “Foucault and the Limits of Identity Rights” in Jill Marshall, Personal Identity at the European Court of Human Rights, Routledge 2022. 

Contributor, Mairead Enright and Aoife O’Donoghue (eds) Rights and the Mother and Baby Homes Report: Reaching Different Findings  available here: https://www.tudublin.ie/explore/news/rights-and-the-mother-and-baby-homes-report-launch.html

Deirdre McGowan, 'The Gendered Properties of Marriage Law' in Peter Dunne and Lynsay Black (eds), 'Law and Gender in Modern Ireland: Critique and Reform (Bloomsbury 2019)

Deirdre McGowan, 'Reframing the mediation debate in Irish all-issues divorce disputes: from mediation vs. litigation to mediation and litigation' (2018) 40 (2) Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law.  A pre-publication version is available here:  https://arrow.dit.ie/aaschlawart/33

Deirdre McGowan, 'Class, criminality and marriage breakdown in post-independence Ireland' in Niamh Howlin & Kevin Costello (eds) Law and the Family in Ireland 1800-1950 (Palgrave 2017).

Deirdre McGowan, ‘Commentary on Flynn v Power’ in Julie McCandless, Aoife O’Donoghue and Mairead Enright (eds), Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments (Hart Publishing, 2017).

Deirdre McGowan, “Governed by Marriage Law: An Irish Genealogy” (2016) 25 (3) Social and Legal Studies 311 - 331.

Deirdre McGowan, "The Normalising Power of Marriage Law: An Irish Genealogy 1945 – 2010" (Maynooth University 2015).

Deirdre McGowan, "Impeding Free Movement with Marriage Law: The Civil Registration (Amendment) Act 2014" 2016(19)2 Irish Journal of Family Law  3

Research Interests

Family Law, feminist legal theory.