CITICESS MASTERCLASS - Grappling With ‘Wicked Problems’ and Complex Harms

Theme: Social Inclusion within the European Project CITICESS.

Join us for the third session of our five-part Masterclass series, designed to progressively guide participants along the path from a basis to in-depth knowledge of Social Inclusion methods and tools. 

This Masterclass will present on the University of Limerick's  Local Leadership Programme, Research Evidence into Policy, Programmes and Practice which supports frontline professionals and others working at a community level to address complex local problems.  

Speaker & Featuring Projects 

Dr. Johnny Connolly is a Research Fellow at the University of Limerick's School of Law and leads the Local Leadership Programme. This program, funded by the Department of Justice, aims to help public sector professionals use evidence more effectively when working with children, with a particular emphasis on improving responses to complex or ‘wicked’ problems. He leads a module called ‘Using evidence to improve societal problems in the real world’. He also lectures on a Policing and Criminal Justice online masters programme, a collaboration with Templemore Garda Training College.

His recent research projects include Defending human rights from the ground up: drugs, systemic violence and community safety funded by the Irish Research Council/Irish Council for Civil Liberties.  He published research project: Building community resilience – responding to criminal networks in Dublin South Central in 2019. He also helped create the Community Crime Impact Assessment as part of Ireland's National Drugs Strategy.

Before joining the University of Limerick, he was a Visiting Fellow at the School of Social Work and Social Policy at Trinity College, Dublin, and prior to that he spent ten years as a Research Officer with the Health Research Board. As part of this role he was Ireland’s National Correspondent to the European reference group on illicit drug markets and drug-related crime and the National Legal database on drug law and policy, based at the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction in Lisbon, Portugal.

From 2005 to 2007, he served as Vice Chairman of the Criminal Justice Platform for the Council of Europe. He was also on the Advisory Group for the Drug Treatment Court for five years. He has managed several innovative research projects, including a five-country study on drug seizures in 2012 and the first national study on illicit drug markets in Ireland.

He has been a visiting lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin, University College Dublin, Dublin Institute of Technology, New York University and the Mater Dei Institute in Dublin where he has taught courses on criminology, policing, youth justice, and society and politics. He was a founding member of Ireland’s first ecological village in Cloughjordan, Tipperary and a member of the Board of the Irish Penal Reform Trust from 2010-2016. In 2017, he was appointed by the Minister for Justice to the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland, which published its report in 2018. 

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Research Evidence into Policy Programmes and Practice (REPPP) 

It is a research collaboration between the School of Law at the University of Limerick and the Department of Justice in Ireland.  It aim is to improve the evidence base in relation to youth crime and youth justice in Ireland.  First established in 2016, it has undertaken a number of significant projects which have informed the development of youth justice policy and practice.  Each research programme is co-designed and refined with officials from the Department of Justice. Methodologies for each study are presented in a comprehensive, practical, stepwise manner to encourage replication within the youth crime space nationally and internationally and wider applicability across human services.  

The Local Leadership Programme (LLP)

The University of Limerick’s Local Leadership Programme (LLP) was developed to provide participants with the space and possibly new tools to re-look at what may have been to date intractable problems in their community or their area of work and to co-design better solutions. The programme offers places to professionals, usually preferencing frontline practitioners from the statutory and community and voluntary sector, with the demonstrable capacity to bring energy, critical thinking, imagination, leadership, and influence to addressing the problems they face.

The problems in mind are those, which may be ‘wicked’ by nature and are not amenable to simple solutions^[1]. At the local level, wicked problems include criminal activity, community safety issues, drug and substance misuse, poor educational achievement or impaired community efficacy, often associated with modern ‘developed’ societies where existing policy and service infrastructures can be part of the problem.

The LLP takes a common-sense, but distinctively novel approach informed by the evidence advising on how to deal with complex problems. A central idea is that wicked problems cannot be addressed without reforming ways of thinking and practising and transforming systems. The transformation involves finding new ways to understand complex problems, and more effective ways to cooperate and collaborate up, down and horizontally across systems in addressing those problems.

Between 2019 and 2023, more than 150 professionals representing a wide variety of organisations from the statutory, community and voluntary and educational sectors have participated in the Local Leadership Programme. Programmes have been help in counties all over Ireland, in both urban and rural locations.

When & Where?

Date: 6th November 2024 

Time: 10:15 AM - 12:30 PM (GMT+1)

Location: Online (Online link will be sent out to all registered participants.)

Agenda:

10:15 AM: Virtual Coffee
10:30 AM: Plenary Session, Opening & Introductions 
10:35 AM: Masterclass session
11:20 AM: Breakout sessions 
11:50 AM: Question & Answers
12:20 PM: Closing Session

Expression of Interest:

To attend, please fill out the Expression of Interest Form:

*Registration for this event is now closed!

The closing date for registration is Thursday 31st of October, a zoom link will be issued to registered participants in advance of the masterclass.  

For further information please contact Eileen O'Keeffe ([email protected]) or Kate McKenna ([email protected]). 

For more details about the European Project CITICESS, visit our CITICESS Project Page.