Dr Denise O’Leary is Assistant Head of School of Hospitality Management and Tourism. As well as working in management roles, she has worked as a lecturer and researcher in a number of third level institutions in Ireland and the US. She also worked for almost 10 years in a consulting capacity in the private sector, during which time she successfully facilitated a broad variety of evaluation, strategic planning, team development and inter-organisational relationship development activities.
Her research focuses on collaboration at both an organisational and inter-organisational level and she has worked with practitioners from across diverse sectors, integrating action research and action learning into organisation development and team development. Her research explores collaboration in networks, including food tourism networks. She is also interested the role of tourism in supporting community development.
She has been both a lead and co-applicant on a number of successful grant proposals including an FP7 project on developing SME competencies in eight European countries. She supervises post-graduate students and is a reviewer for a number of journals. She is an active member of the action research/action learning community and is on the steering committee for the annual Action Research Colloquium.
