Biography
Brian Treacy is a PhD student in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine at King's.
Brian Treacy joined the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine in October 2024 as a LISS DTP funded PhD student. He holds a Bachelor of Social Science (University College Dublin) and an MSc in Comparative Social Policy (University of Oxford). His masters dissertation, awarded distinction, is entitled 'Work and Family Life Reconciliation Across the European Union: A Capabilities Approach to Welfare States’ Configurations'.
Brian has several years of professional experience. He worked in a paid and elected role in UCD’s Students’ Union, playing a part in developing university policy on student conduct, plagiarism, and student representation on boards, as well as the UCD Strategy 2020-2024. During his master's, he was a research assistant on the ERC-funded project Changing Elites.
Following his MSc, Brian worked for 2.5 years as International Affairs, Research, and Policy Officer at the Irish Medical Organisation. There, he helped design and analyse large-scale surveys of medical doctors on i) gender inequality and ii) working conditions and burnout, with findings informing national contract negotiations and featuring in Irish national media.
Research
Thesis title: TBD
Brian's PhD thesis aims to examine perceptions of the extent and perceptions of the causes of economic inequality in Europe, using mixed methods. He hopes to develop understandings of the complex ways in which such perceptions relate to i) evaluations of the fairness of our own income, ii) objective economic inequality, and iii) our wellbeing, as well as advance both conceptual and methodological frameworks in this area.
His PhD research sits within a broader interest in understanding how inequalities in a wider sense (including but not limited to health, gender, race, age, disability) are created, justified, and contested in everyday life, and these impacts on individuals and social relations. A core thread in such research endeavours is the examining of how social hierarchies are reproduced and legitimized through cultural narratives, moral reasoning, and interpretations of ‘getting ahead’ and deservingness.
PhD supervision
- Principal supervisor: Professor Ben Geiger
- Secondary supervisor: Dr Kirstie Hewlett