Limerick woman bids to be NUI’s first female chancellor in more than 100 years

LIMERICK woman Linda O’Shea Farren is running for election in a bid to become the first female chancellor of the National University of Ireland (NUI) in 116 years. 

Ms O’Shea Farren is currently serving her fifth five-year term on the NUI Senate, which governs the federal university system of UCC, University of Galway, UCD, and Maynooth University. 

The Limerick woman is hoping to become the first woman NUI chancellor, but is also only the second woman ever to even run for this role. 

Before her, in 1976, Maureen Curtin Black, who campaigned for widow’s rights and set up the first citizen’s advice bureau in Cork, ran for the position almost 50 years ago. 

Ms O’Shea Farren went to school in Presentation Convent and Laurel Hill in Limerick, before going on to study law in UCC.  

After she was admitted as a solicitor in Ireland, she requalified and practised as an attorney-at-law in the New York and London offices of American law firm Debevoise & Plimpton for many years.  

Shortly after she arrived in New York in 1985, Ms O’Shea Farren founded the Irish American Bar Association of New York to give free legal advice to young Irish people who were leaving Ireland in their droves as part of the ‘brain drain’ and living undocumented in America.  

Since her return to Ireland, Ms O’Shea Farren has held a broad range of senior positions in law, government, finance, education, health, disability and the arts in the private, public and voluntary sectors.  

She served as government programme manager and adviser to Minister for Justice Nora Owen during the Rainbow Coalition in the mid-1990’s.  

Among other positions, the Limerick woman also worked as a manager in the Irish Wheelchair Association and served on the Boards of the Educational Building Society (after the financial crisis) and HIQA.  

Having campaigned for people with disabilities throughout her adult life, Ms O’Shea Farren was instrumental in getting Ireland’s first disability law on the statute books in 2005. 

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Overall, she has 22 years service to the NUI senate, as well as her legal, mediation and public policy qualifications and her broad work experience in the public, private and voluntary sectors.   

Those who can vote for the chancellor include graduates of Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, who graduated between 1975 and 1994, as well as NIHE and Thomond College in 1976 and 1977. 

NUI graduates living anywhere in the world can request voting papers online from www.nui.ie and the deadline for requesting papers is October 9. 

Completed ballot papers must be received by NUI in Merrion Square, Dublin (by post or hand delivery) before October 17, 2024.