Karen’s key interests lie in heritage regeneration, and the use of heritage and history as crucial tools for the transformation of communities, whether urban or rural. She works with clients, whether community groups, local authority or private clients in devising heritage strategies, fundraising, working within the Southgate Associates team delivering Architectural Heritage Impact Assessments, Conservation Management Plans, Masterplanning, Heritage Planning and Interpretation. She has a particular interest in working with participative models of planning, and the use of community consultation.

Before joining Southgate Associates, she was employed for over ten years in a series of urban/spatial research units in universities across the island of Ireland, carrying out research on various urban problems, such as youth street violence, safety in the public realm, hate crime, sectarianism, racism in urban streets, etc. Karen also worked in the community development sector for three years. She has previously been employed as a fulltime lecturer in Sociology at the University of Ulster, more recently taught part-time in the area of Social Policy at University College Cork, and has multiple publications in peer reviewed journals. Karen has a Batchelor in Social Science and a Ph.D in Social Anthropology from The Queen’s University, Belfast.