CORA
Cork Open Research Archive (CORA) is UCC’s Open Access institutional repository which enables UCC researchers to make their research outputs freely available and accessible.
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Designing a mind-mindedness intervention
(University College Cork, 2026-04-28) Clifford, Siobhan; Larkin, Fionnuala; Ryan, Christian; Irish Prison Service
Parental mind-mindedness, defined as a caregiver's propensity to represent and treat their child as a psychological agent with independent thoughts, feelings, and intentions, has been associated with positive developmental outcomes and has consequently been proposed as a potential target for clinical intervention. This thesis examines the extent to which the current evidence base substantiates such application, via a critical appraisal of the literature, two empirical studies, and an integrative discussion.
Chapter 1 provides a critical review of the theoretical and empirical foundations of mind-mindedness, including its relationship to parental sensitivity, theory of mind, and conceptually adjacent constructs such as parental reflective functioning and insightfulness. This review indicates that although associations between mind-mindedness and attachment security or theory of mind development are relatively well replicated, they remain correlational in nature, and claims regarding the construct's discriminant validity may be less firmly established than is often assumed.
Study 1 examined these considerations by conducting semi-structured interviews with five internationally recognised mind-mindedness researchers regarding the construct's translation into clinical contexts. Reflective thematic analysis generated four themes, pertaining broadly to the positioning of mind-mindedness within its wider theoretical context, its practical application, considerations of diversity, and the research-practice gap. Participants expressed a relatively high degree of confidence in the construct's clinical readiness; this finding, however, is interpreted cautiously within the thesis, given participants' shared professional investment in the field, and is regarded as indicative of disciplinary conviction rather than independent confirmation of empirical justification. A subsequent reflexive review of the analytic process suggested that an initially deferential interview stance may have contributed to an early overstatement of consensus, a revision consistent with the epistemic caution advocated throughout the thesis.
Study 2 comprised a systematic review of interventions designed to promote parental mind-mindedness, identifying twenty-six eligible interventions across community, clinical, and high-risk populations. Reported intervention techniques were mapped, where feasible, onto the Behaviour Change Wheel framework, with findings suggesting that education, enablement, training, and modelling were among the more frequently employed intervention functions. Results indicate that short-term change in mind-mindedness, particularly reductions in non-attuned parental comments, may be attainable under comparatively low-risk conditions; however, evidence pertaining to the durability of such change, comparative effectiveness, and downstream benefit to children and families remains limited, and the potential influence of publication bias could not be formally evaluated.
Chapter 4 synthesises these findings into a provisional evidence-based roadmap, differentiating between claims that are well supported, plausible but unproven, and presently unknown. On this basis, a preliminary theory of change and accompanying logic model is proposed, intended to function as a heuristic for future research and practice rather than a definitive framework. Collectively, this thesis contributes a more precise and appropriately circumscribed account of what is currently known, plausible, and unresolved regarding parental mind-mindedness and its clinical application, while underscoring the substantial uncertainty that remains prior to the responsible implementation or scaling of such interventions.
Indigenous knowledge
(Routledge, 2026-06-09) Kavanagh , Elena; Limeberry , Veronica
This book chapter introduces Indigenous Knowledge (IK) as a diverse set of knowledge systems, practices, and ways of knowing that are continually generated through relationships with place, culture, and community. It discusses the relationship between Indigenous Knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), including their relevance to environmental stewardship, biodiversity conservation, climate adaptation, natural resource management, and conflict mitigation.
Within the context of environmental peacebuilding, the chapter highlights the importance of Indigenous Knowledge for supporting more inclusive decision-making, ecological sustainability, and peaceful approaches to land and resource governance. It also addresses the historical marginalization of Indigenous knowledge systems by colonial and Western scientific approaches and considers frameworks such as “two-eyed seeing,” which brings Indigenous and Western ways of knowing into dialogue. The chapter emphasizes that meaningful inclusion requires Indigenous communities to have agency, leadership, and decision-making authority in environmental governance and peacebuilding processes.
Rights of nature
(Routledge, 2026-06-26) Cullinan, Cormac; Kavanagh, Elena
This book chapter introduces Rights of Nature (RoN) as an emerging legal and ethical approach that recognizes nature, ecosystems, and other natural entities as subjects with rights rather than solely as objects of human ownership, use, or regulation. Rights of Nature represents a shift from predominantly anthropocentric approaches to environmental law toward more ecocentric forms of governance that recognize the intrinsic value and ecological integrity of the natural world.
Within the context of environmental peacebuilding, the chapter considers the potential of Rights of Nature to reshape relationships between people, law, governance, and the environment. It highlights how recognizing the rights and legal standing of nature can influence environmental decision-making, strengthen ecological protection, and contribute to more sustainable and equitable approaches to managing land and natural resources. The concept also raises important questions concerning representation, legal personhood, enforcement, and the role of Indigenous and other relational understandings of human–nature relationships.
Rights of Nature offers a framework for reconsidering conventional legal systems and governance structures in ways that acknowledge ecological interdependence and the responsibilities of humans toward the wider Earth community. Its growing recognition in legal systems around the world makes it increasingly relevant to environmental governance, ecological justice, and environmental peacebuilding.
Sustainability
(Routledge, 2026-06-26) Jaskolski, Martina; Kavanagh, Elena
This book entry examines sustainability as a key concept for understanding the long-term relationship between environmental, social, and economic systems. Sustainability concerns the capacity to meet present needs while maintaining the ecological and social conditions necessary for future generations, requiring attention to the interconnected consequences of human activities, resource use, and development.
Within the context of environmental peacebuilding, sustainability provides an important framework for considering whether interventions, policies, and institutions can support both lasting peace and environmental integrity over time. Environmental degradation, resource pressures, inequality, and conflict can undermine sustainable outcomes, while approaches that integrate environmental protection, social well-being, participation, and long-term thinking can contribute to more resilient and peaceful societies.
The entry highlights the relevance of sustainability to environmental peacebuilding as both a guiding principle and a practical objective. It draws attention to the need to move beyond short-term interventions and consider how environmental governance and peacebuilding processes can support enduring relationships between communities, institutions, natural resources, and ecosystems.
Risk management for combinatorial auctions
(University College Cork, 2005-07-31) Holland, Alan; O'Sullivan, Barry; Enterprise Ireland; Science Foundation Ireland
Auction theory has traditionally regarded bids in auctions as enforceable commitments. We relax this important, yet often incorrect, assumption that is common to almost all prior literature on the subject. This work addresses the possibility of winning bids being withdrawn, or reneged upon, before a transaction is completed successfully. In particular, we examine the significance of winning-bid withdrawal in a combinatorial auction setting. We find that it may be difficult or even impossible for the bid-taker to find a repair solution of adequate revenue without causing undue disturbance to the remaining winning bids in the allocation. We have called this the bid-taker's exposure problem and we also show that it is exacerbated for a risk averse bid-taker. It is preferable for the bid-taker to pre-empt uncertainty by choosing a solution that is robust to bid-withdrawal and provides a guarantee that possible with-drawls may be repaired easily with a bounded loss in revenue. We discuss the computational difficulties posed by risk management and investigate a constraint programming approach to tackling the problem. We also analyze the drawbacks of this approach and motivate useful extensions to the framework. We then propose a new framework that facilitates solution robustness for constraint programs in a wide range of settings. We briefly demonstrate its versatility with an application to job-shop scheduling. We then apply this new framework to combinatorial auctions in order to investigate the trade-off between robustness and revenue. We also introduce a new auction model that improves solution reparability by facilitating backtracking on winning bids by the bid-taker. We demonstrate experimentally that fewer winning bids partake in robust solutions, thereby reducing any associated overhead in dealing with extra bidders. Finally, we consider the case in which the bid-taker wishes to optimize some social objective, thereby necessitating truthful bidding. We have provided some impossibility results pertaining to truthful mechanism design that incorporate robust solutions. However, we also propose a means of circumventing this problem for restricted class of combinatorial auctions. We develop an approximate allocation algorithm that incentivizes truthful bidding whilst attaining an allocation that minimizes the risk of revenue loss in the event of a winning bid being withdrawn.