Dr. Karen Lysaght is a Director at Southgate Associates, joining the organisation in 2009, having previously worked in research and teaching positions in academia for 10 years. Karen has a first-class honours degree and doctorate from the Queen’s University Belfast. Within Southgate Associates, she has worked on a variety of built heritage projects, specialising in more recent years on urban masterplanning, heritage-led regeneration and EIAR compilation.

She acted as (architectural and cultural) heritage consultant to the Cork City Docklands Framework Masterplanning team, working on behalf of Cork City Council, writing the heritage strategy for the urban regeneration of the 147-hectare site in Cork City Centre.

She is now engaged to act as heritage consultant on various strands of the delivery programme, most relevant being the development of the waterfront of the South Quays, facing Horgan’s Quay. Since 2023 Karen has been employed on Cork Bus Connects, acting as the lead surveyor on the field surveys, and subsequently co-authoring of all of the EIAR architectural heritage chapters and appendices.