This workshop will be based around a discussion of the following 2019 article: “Causality in life course research: The potential use of ‘natural experiments’ for causal inference” by Ross Macmillan and Carmel Hannan in Longitudinal and Life Course Studies Vol 11, issue 1.
Carmel Hannan is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Limerick, Ireland and director of the recently funded “Sociologists who Count!” national research group. She is currently visiting the Life Course Centre as part of a year long research sabbatical. Carmel’s research focuses on stratification issues within the family particularly as they relate to class dynamics. Her latest publication is on causality in life course research (with Ross MacMillan in SSLS). She has led a number of Irish Research Council funded projects focusing on the effects of family structure on child and family wellbeing over the life course. She is currently working on a comparative study of the effects of the economic crisis on families as well as leading a project on how schools influence STEM subject choice. Carmel received her DPhil from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Nuffield Fellow and held a Junior Dean position at Brasenose College as well as a research fellow position at the Department of Social Policy and Social Work. Prior to Oxford, she worked as a senior researcher at the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex and at the Economic and Social Research Institute, in Dublin.