Dr Kieran McCarthy is an elected Independent ​member of Cork City Council and an Irish delegate member of the European Committee of the Regions (COR).

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For the past twenty years, Kieran has written a weekly heritage column in the Cork Independent ‘Our City Our Town’ which has addressed the local history of Cork City and its surrounding region. He has also written 24 books dedicated to Cork. Kieran’s historical walking tours of the city focus on the landscapes and memories within 24 neighbourhoods, which one can read about on his dedicated Cork heritage website www.corkheritage.ie. Kieran’s Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project, was founded by Kieran in 2003 and is now annually implemented in 25 schools in Cork City with 1,200 students annually participating.

 

Kieran holds a PhD in Geography from University College Cork and has interests in ideas of landscape, collective memory, heritage construction, narrative and identity structures.

Within the COR Kieran holds membership of the Commission for Social Policy, Education, Employment, Research and Culture (SEDEC) and has personal interests in the New Skills Agenda, informal and formal education, lifelong learning, the Digital Single Market, smart specialisation, science and innovation in regions and cities, cities and regions of the future, youth and sport, and the socio-cultural effects of IoT. He is Rapporteur on the opinions (1) Digitising European Industry and (2) Building a European Data Economy Kieran also sits on the Commission for Territorial Cohesion and EU Budget (COTER) with personal interests in representing small cities and rural regions in Cohesion Policy, and the dissemination to EU citizens of the work of EU structural funds.  He is also the COR’s rapporteur on the implementation assessment of the EU Urban Agenda.

 

Follow Kieran on twitter at @cllrkmac​ and on Facebook at Cllr Kieran McCarthy.​