Rate My Professor Brenda McNally

Dr. Brenda McNally is a leading scholar in communications, specializing in climate politics and media discourses. She holds a BSc from University College Dublin, an MSc in Science Communication, and a PhD in Communications from Dublin City University, where her 2016 thesis analyzed media and carbon literacy in shaping public engagement with low-carbon transitions in Irish media from 2000 to 2013. Her distinguished career encompasses roles as Assistant Professor in Global Media and Communication at the University of Galway, postdoctoral fellowships at University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, and Arizona State University, and a prestigious Fulbright Irish Scholar Award in 2019, sponsored by Geological Survey Ireland. As a Fulbright scholar, she collaborated with the Centre for Science and Imagination at Arizona State University and the Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder, focusing on socio-ecological imaginaries to enhance climate policy engagement.

Currently serving as a Research Ireland Pathway Fellow at Dublin City University’s School of Communications and the Institute for Future Media, Democracy and Society, Dr. McNally is Principal Investigator on a four-year project examining the evolution and mainstreaming of climate misinformation in Ireland, with implications for regulatory and educational strategies amid AI-driven challenges. Her research interests include climate communication, misinformation, just transitions, climate justice, greenwashing, and digital technologies for environmental engagement. Notable publications feature “Public Communication of Climate and Justice: A Scoping Review” (2025), “Testing the Integrated Framework for Assessing Greenwashing” and “Climate Media Amidst Technopolitical Change” (both 2025), “Climate Obstruction in Ireland: The Contested Transformation of an Agricultural Economy” (2024), “Altered Spaces: New Ways of Seeing and Envisioning Nature with Minecraft” (Visual Studies, 2022), and the EPA report “Citizen’s Views of Climate Action” (2020). Her contributions extend to editorial roles, including co-editor of a forthcoming Thematic Collection on 'Just Transitions' in the Journal of the British Academy (2026), underscoring her impact on advancing informed public discourse and policy on climate challenges.