Personal Profile
Niamh Hickey is an Assistant Professor in Education with Mentoring at the University of Limerick and Course Director of the Postgraduate Diploma in School Leadership. She is a qualified post-primary school teacher and has completed an Irish Research Council funded PhD which was an exploration of distributed leadership practices in Irish post-primary schools. She teaches courses on school culture, mentoring and coaching, and building leadership capacity.
Research Interests
Niamh’s research interests include but are not limited to educational leadership, organisational behaviours, power and empowerment, and well-being.
Selected Publications
Ballantine C, Fahie D, Hickey N, MacCurtain S, MacNeela P, Murphy C, Hodgins M, Mannix-McNamara P (2026;), “Research relationalities: trauma-informed principles for recruiting hidden and hard-to-reach participants to sensitive interviews”. Qualitative Research Journal, https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-05-2026-0244
Bruce, P., Hickey, N., Hrymak, V., Bruce, C., and McNamara, P. M. (2026). Reporting of Work-Related Stress: Disclosure Hesitancy Among a Sample of Construction Managers in Ireland. Buildings.
Bosetti, L., Cherkowski, S., Hickey, N., and McNamara, P. M. (2025) “Reclaiming human flourishing in teacher and leadership education: Addressing cultures of incivility in higher education” in: ‘Incivility and Workplace Toxicity in P-12 Schools’. New York: Routledge.
Hickey N, Flaherty A, Mannix McNamara P (2024), “Challenges to the sustainability of Irish post-primary school leadership: the role of distributed leadership”. Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 62 No. 3 pp. 341–354, doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-05-2023-0108
Bruce, P., Bruce, C., Hrymak, V., Hickey, N., and Mannix McNamara, P. Staff Stress and Interpersonal Conflict in Secondary Schools—Implications for School Leadership. Societies 2022, 12(6) https://doi.org/10.3390/soc12060186
Snow, N., Hickey, N., Blom, N., Mahony, L. O., & Mannix-McNamara, P. (2021). An Exploration of Leadership in Post-Primary Schools: The Emergence of Toxic Leadership. Societies, 11(2), 54.
Mannix-McNamara, P., Hickey, N., MacCurtain, S. and Blom, N., 2021. The dark side of school culture. Societies, 11(3), p.87.
Mannix McNamara, P., and Hickey, N. (2020) ‘Educator Well-Being: Ignoring systemic stress at our peril’ In: ‘Ireland’s Yearbook of Education 2019/2020’. Dublin: Education Matters.