Mairéad is a post-doctoral researcher, and her research interests include nature-based solutions, multispecies co-design and urban wilding. She currently works with NovelEco and another European project, Naturescapes, where she explores the everyday meanings and values of nature in cities.
She completed her PhD with NovelEco where she investigated how to co-design urban wild spaces using multispecies methods. During this time, she was awarded a Fulbright-EPA scholarship to conduct fieldwork in New York City with the New School’s Urban Systems Lab (now with New York University) as part of her PhD project.
- O’Donnell, M., Pineda Pinto, M., Andersson, E., Collier, M.J. 2026. From Control to Cohabitation: Social-Ecological Insights on Urban Wildness Narratives, Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 117, 129279, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2026.129279.
- O’Donnell, M. 2025. Future Novel Ecologies: Exploring multispecies futures in urban places through a co-design workshop, Urban Ecosystems, 28, p. 234. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-025-01846-9
- O’Donnell, M., Collier, M., Pineda-Pinto, M., Cooper, C., Nulty, F. and Castañeda, N.R., 2025. Redefining co-design for social-ecological research and practice: A systematic literature review. Environmental Science & Policy, 164, p.103998. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2025.103998
