Cliona Hannon
The University of Dublin
Cliona Hannon (BA, MA, MBA, PhD) is responsible for strategic priorities relating to access and diversity at Trinity College, University of Dublin, as Director of the Trinity Access Programmes (TAP). In the late 1990s, Cliona set up an innovative, year-long Foundation Course for young adults from working-class backgrounds. By 2018, 25% of Trinity’s first year cohort was made up of non-traditional students. Cliona is co-director of the award-winning Trinity Access 21 project, which focuses on providing ‘access’ mentors to young working-class people at an early stage in their second-level education, as well as developing their agency, identity and knowledge to make informed post-secondary decisions. Since 2016, Cliona has been a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, adapting the TAP Foundation Course to Lady Margaret Hall (LMH), which is now admitting its third student cohort to a Foundation Year. The Financial Times announced earlier this year that Cambridge University is proposing to develop a university-wide Foundation Year, based on the Trinity College Dublin and LMH models.