I am a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Maynooth University in Ireland.
Over the years I have studied the works and Marx and Engels in general and more recently with a special emphasis on their Irish material.

This latter research has allowed me to develop an undergraduate course on how Marx, and to a lesser degree Engels. explored the colonial relationship between Britain and Ireland. And as part of this investigation into colonial Ireland, I discovered how much they examined the ecological conditions of Ireland and specifically how the Irish soil was itself colonized.

Accordingly, this work allowed me to use Foster’s concept of the metabolic rift to make sense of the colonial extraction of the constituents of the Irish soil. All of this endeavour has allowed me to develop a masters course on the dialectics of the Irish metabolic rifts.

Finally, I hope to develop a dialectical pedagogy in understanding the complex relationships between nature and society.