John O Brennan is a Professor within the Department of Sociology at Maynooth University and holds the Jean Monnet Chair in European Integration at Maynooth. He is also the Director of the Maynooth Centre for European and Eurasian Studies which is a designated Jean Monenet Centre of Excellence (2020-23). His work focuses on European Union institutions and politics, and, specifically on the process and politics of the EU’s Enlargement policy. He also researches and writes about Ireland’s relationship with the European Union and is currently finishing a monograph which examines Ireland’s experience of EU membership over 50 years since accession in 1973.
O’ Brennan is a board member and Vice-President of the Irish Association for Contemporary European Studies (IACES) and a member of the Irish government’s Brexit Stakeholder Group, and a member of the Irish Institute for International and European Affairs’ ‘Global Europe’ group. Previously, he worked as a Lecturer in European Union Politics at the University of Limerick (2001-2007) after holding Irish Research Council PhD and Post-Doctoral awards. He was also a Visiting Fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies(EUISS) in Paris (2005) and an Open Society lecturer in Politics at the Varna Economics University in Bulgaria (2000-2001).
He contributes regularly to national and international media platforms on European Union issues, including Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, BBC News, The Irish Examiner, Irish Independent, and The Irish Times, LBC radio, Newstalk, Open Democracy, RTE Radio, RTE Television, Sky News, Today FM’b, Virgin News Media, and many other outlets.