NUI Galway has appointed Dr Kieran Conboy as Dean of the College of Business, Public Policy and Law. Dr Conboy is an internationally acknowledged expert in information systems innovation.

Prior to his appointment Dr Conboy served as Head of the School of Business and Economics, Vice-Dean of Research for the School of Business and Economics and as Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems at NUI Galway. Dr Conboy also held an Associate Professorship of Information Systems at the University of New South Wales, Australia. 

As an educator, Dr Conboy has designed and delivered courses including agile and lean project management, portfolio management, contemporary innovation models and paradigms. Together with leading international colleagues, he has developed a global standard for information systems curriculum design and content.

In 2012, Dr Conboy established the Enterprise Agility research cluster at the Whitaker Institute. As cluster leader, he leads on a number of national and international projects funded by SFI (Science Foundation Ireland), Enterprise Ireland and the Irish Research Council. Prestigious research achievements include an SFI award to assess agile and open project management and software engineering - the first such award made by SFI to a Business School in Ireland. The cluster has built extensive industry collaboration and funding from organisations including Dell, Atlassian, Information Mosaic, and HP, as well as numerous SMEs nationally and internationally.

Recently, Dr Conboy was awarded an Irish Research Council Award to identify ways in which national agencies can optimise the inputs, processes, outputs and outcomes of crowdsourcing efforts and maximise participation of individuals and firms including gender and ethnicity, industry sector and location diversity. 

Commenting on his appointment, Dr Conboy stated that, “The College of Business, Public Policy and Law has developed innovative programs and approaches to delivering education across diverse and contemporary themes. We are exploring creative ways to better prepare students for employment and continually seek to advance the College through scholarship, industry and community engagement. The success of the College is recognized by prestigious awards such as AMBA and EPAS accreditation, and postgraduate programme awards. A key focus during my tenure as Dean will be to create a College with a unique identity which provides Global perspectives and expertise on key issues in law, business and economics.” 

NUI Galway is an integral part of the regional, national and international education and research landscape. The College of Business, Public Policy and Law is rich in academic value and research impact and a strong contributor to the international profile of NUI Galway. As Dean, Dr Conboy will seek to leverage the success of the College in terms of its future research focus.

Dr Conboy continued, “As Dean I will pursue an ambitious research and innovation agenda with a focus on excellence and impact. I will work with colleagues across the University to create a strategy that builds on our strengths and nurtures new and emerging areas of research. A key emphasis will be placed on collaboration across the University and the broader research community, particularly as we look towards EU Horizon 2020. From a policy and practice perspective I feel this is where we are as a College and can add real value in terms of the excellent research being undertaken across the College in rich and diverse areas such as Disability, Law, International Management, Public Policy, Economics, Innovation, Human Resource Management and Human Rights amongst others.”

A native of Mayo and graduate of NUI Galway and the University of Limerick, Dr Conboy is a leading author in agile and lean processes in software organisations. He has authored more than 100 articles and reports, including publications in Information Systems Research, Information Systems Journal, the Journal of the AIS and IEEE Software. He is an editor of the European Journal of Information Systems and has chaired a number of international conferences in his field, most recently the Lean Enterprise Software and Systems Conference (LESS2013) in Galway.

The breadth of his expertise and international reputation is recognized through his advisory roles on agile and innovation management practice across many organisations and on funding agency policy and practice in Ireland, the EU, Australia and the U.S. Dr Conboy is also a Fulbright scholar, who in 2009 visited Carnegie Mellon University advising on the business value of IT systems to the Software Engineering Institute.

Dr Kieran Conboy succeeds Professor Ciaran O’Neill, of the College of Business, Public Policy and Law, who is to concentrate on his research having recently been named as one of the six national Health Research Board Leaders in Ireland.

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