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Last updated 23rd March 2023

Grainne completed a DPhil at the University of Oxford (Christ Church) (2009), an MSc at Queen’s University, Belfast (1999), and a BSc (Hons) at the University of Ulster (1998). 

Grainne is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the Division of Social Sciences, and a core member of the Just Futures research centre. She researches feminism and feminist activism, anti-racism and human rights activism, social movements, and young people’s social, political, cultural, and civic participation.

Grainne was a lead researcher on the European Commission, Horizon 2020 project, entitled Partispace: Spaces and styles of participation. Formal, non-formal and informal possibilities of young people’s participation in European cities (partispace.eu). Partispace, which ran from 2015 to 2018, explored young people’s political and social participation in the public sphere - in formal, non-formal and informal settings - and took place in eight cities across Europe.

Grainne is leading/ co-leading the following research projects:

• Building Networks of Resilience project, funded by the Coronavirus Community Support Fund, distributed by The National Lottery Community Fund, a collaboration between RAPAR, Migrant Voice and Kanlungan Filipino Consortium
• COME:ON (Culture – Occupation – Mobility – Europe : Operational Network!), funded by the European Union's Erasmus+ European Youth Together programme
• OUYE (Opening Universities for Youth in Europe), funded by the European Union's Erasmus+ European Youth Together programme
• Occupying hostile environments: creating feminist spaces, funded by University of Huddersfield
• Making Spaces: exploring feminist responses and survival strategies in the Covid-19 pandemic, funded by University of Huddersfield
• How social movements move: a local case study of female post-secondary students' understanding and uptake of #MeToo, funded by the University of Calgary
• Creating a living charter of youth rights: Greater Manchester, funded by the Office of the Mayor of Greater Manchester
• Migration and lived experience: displaced young people living in Europe (funded by University of Huddersfield)

Recently completed projects:

• Empowering girls and young women through Project 1325 (funded by WomenCentre/ Big Lottery fund)
• Partispace: Spaces and styles of participation. Formal, non-formal and informal possibilities of young people’s participation in European cities, funded by the European Commission, Horizon 2020 fund

Grainne has recently co-edited a collection that emerged from the Partispace European H2020 project and features contributions from UK and international colleagues involved in the project. The book was published my Emerald late 2022: McMahon, Rowley and Batsleer (2002): Reshaping Youth Participation. Manchester in a European Gaze. UK: Emerald. 

Grainne is the Research Lead and a Trustee for RAPAR, a human rights organisation based in Manchester, UK, working with displaced people, Convenor of the British Sociological Association's Gender and Feminism Study Group, and on twitter: @grainnemcmahon.

External Positions