Nuala Whelan

Nuala Whelan is a Lecturer in Adult Guidance Counselling and Reflective Practice at Maynooth University's Department of Adult and Community Education, School of Education. She also serves as Deputy Head of Department and is a Chartered Work and Organisational Psychologist with over 20 years of experience in community-based employment services, particularly working with clients disadvantaged in the labor market.

Her research interests focus on employability, employment service effectiveness, career guidance models and practice, capability-informed practice, collaborative working, policy implementation, and enhancing human capacity for personal, organizational, and societal impact. She specializes in the psychology of unemployment and re-employment, psychometric testing, and career development theory. Her current research involves further development of the MEEG (Model of Enabling Employment Guidance) employment guidance tool-kit and metric for practitioners working with those most distant from the labor market.

Whelan's publications reveal a strong focus on employment guidance, particularly in the context of public employment services, welfare reform, and the impact of economic crises on unemployment. Her work demonstrates a consistent theme of bridging theory and practice in career guidance, with increasing attention to the psychological impacts of unemployment, especially during the pandemic. She has developed practical tools like the MEEG framework and EEPIC interventions that translate research into actionable guidance for practitioners working with vulnerable populations.

• IRC Scholar (Irish Research Council, 2013)
• Peter Saville Award for Advances in Organisational Psychology (Psychological Society of Ireland, November 2020)
• Best Policy Paper - Precarious Employment & Work (European Association of Work and Organisational Psychology, September 2023)

Whelan actively contributes to policy development through her role as Chair of the Science and Public Policy Committee (SPPC) with the Psychological Society of Ireland, and serves on boards including Ballymun Job Centre and Gems NI Belfast. Her extensive professional activities include reviewing for journals such as the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, and BMC Public Health. Her research projects, like the ACA PES (A Collaborative Approach to building Public Employment Services), demonstrate her commitment to improving employment services through collaborative research and practical implementation.