TU Dublin is the first Irish Technological University to renew an Athena Swan award. Self-assessment team Chair, Lianne Rooney, reflects on the process.
Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin) is Ireland’s first technological university, established in January 2019 following the merger of three former Institutes of Technology.
As part of the November 2025 round, TU Dublin successfully renewed its institutional Athena Swan Bronze (AS) award, becoming the first of the new technological universities (TUs) to navigate the renewal process.
Athena Swan in Technological Universities
The Higher Education Authority (HEA) requires Irish HE institutions to engage with the Athena Swan Ireland Charter to retain eligibility for research funding. The Technological Universities Act (2018) enabled consortia of Institutes of Technology to apply for Technological University designation. Five Technological Universities (TUs) have been established.
To meet HEA timelines, newly established TUs are required to obtain Athena Swan Ireland Bronze awards within three years of formation. All five TUs have now met this target.
TUs are characterised by their provision of vocationally and professionally focused science and technology programmes. The academic career framework in TUs differs from that of the traditional university sector and the workload model requires a teaching commitment of up to 18 hours weekly.
Athena Swan in TU Dublin, 2020-2025
Preparation for TU Dublin’s first full institutional Athena Swan application began in 2020, during an unprecedented period. The work took place amid a pandemic, an extensive organisational redesign and a focus on shaping the identity and organisational culture of a new institution.
The 2020/21 self-assessment team (SAT) comprised 45 members. The SAT adopted an innovative approach to consultation during the national lockdown periods by establishing anonymous online asynchronous chat forums for focus group contributions.
The self-assessment process identified several key challenges: insufficient support for staff returning from maternity leave, the impact of Covid-19 on work-life balance, limited equality data beyond gender, and the underrepresentation of women among staff and students in Engineering and ICT disciplines. The resulting action plan comprised 62 actions, including seven priority actions focused on improving maternity leave and return-to-work experiences, and addressing disciplinary gender imbalances through targeted departmental Athena Swan Ireland awards.
TU Dublin was awarded its first Athena Swan Bronze award in March 2022. Panel feedback commended TU Dublin’s strategic approach; a common equality and sustainability impact assessment; interview panellist training through the ‘License to Recruit’ programme, and proposals to develop inclusive meeting guidelines and training.
2025 renewal process: challenges and lessons learned
I joined TU Dublin in April 2024 with responsibility for leading the institutional Athena Swan process and supporting departmental applications. As Chair of the institutional SAT, an immediate challenge was to introduce evaluation and impact assessment of an action plan still very much in progress.
The renewal application process centres on a progress review of the previous action plan. We sought to measure progress as well as to understand the experiences of action owners and implementers. This approach flagged challenges in progressing departmental applications and highlighted that some functions were responsible for a disproportionate percentage of actions.
The 2025 self-assessment process was conducted during another period of challenge and change. TU Dublin welcomed a new President in January 2025 and joined the newly formed Technological Universities Association (TUA). A smaller SAT of 15 members was convened to progress the AS renewal. Staff engagement was impacted, with much lower consultation response rate to the staff culture survey than in 2020.
We responded to these challenges by drawing on rich qualitative data harvested from the survey and focus groups. We reviewed panel feedback from the previous award cycle and incorporated unactioned recommendations into the next action plan. Finally, we consulted
national policy and strategy documents such as the HEA Second National Review of Gender Equality in Irish HEIs to improve alignment of actions with recommendations from the Review.
We felt it was important to address these challenges in the application document. This paid off, with the panel feedback commending the honesty and reflection of the application.
By the end of 2025, 95% of actions had been completed or were underway. Key actions completed during this period included the development and piloting of the Equality and Sustainability Impact Assessment (ESIA) process; strengthening the ‘License to Recruit’ training programme with the inclusion of a compulsory race equity module; maintaining gender balanced representation in leadership committees and the development of a booklet to support pregnant employees.
2026-2030 Action Plan: recalibration and reflexivity
While we made good progress overall on the 2022-2025 action plan, progress toward priority actions has been uneven. Targets set for departmental awards were not met and were ambitious in the context of an organisational redesign of the University. Consultation identified improvements in perception of support before, during and after maternity and family leave but also clearly highlighted room for further improvement, particularly for academic women returners. These remain priority areas of focus in the next action plan.
Development of the action plan was approached with a view to further embedding developments such as the ESIA process and adjusting and refining other actions in response to institutional and sectoral changes. One such change is the introduction of Professor grades for technological universities, a welcome development that will reshape the academic career framework in the TU sector.
Continued institutional and sectoral change is anticipated and will necessitate a more reflexive approach to action plan implementation. We intend to do this by establishing a new working group responsible for action plan monitoring, implementation and evaluation; by sharing more frequent action plan progress updates and adjustments and undertaking a full mid-term review in 2028.
Advice for other institutions
In our experience, the renewal process has provided a welcome opportunity to honestly reflect on what has worked well and redefine actions and priorities without the pressure to demonstrate the level of impact required for higher AS award levels.
In contrast to the more structured initial Bronze application, renewal requires applicants to make choices about how to organise information and what data to include. Word count limitations may prevent narrative updates for every action. However, omission can create doubt for panel reviewers. A careful balance is required.
Lianne Rooney is EDI Lead at TU Dublin, responsible for managing gender equity initiatives, including all Athena Swan work.
