Dr. Irena Loveikaite is a PhD graduate at SETU under the supervision of Dr John O’Brien and Dr Jacinta Byrne-Doran. Herinterdisciplinary PhD research, titled ‘The Experience and Performance of ‘Appropriate Femininity’ by Teenage Girls in Contemporary Ireland: Collision of Online and Offline Selves,’ explored issues of identity, young people's lives, social control, social media and gender, media discourses and neoliberalism, modern forms of surveillance and power, and issues of embodiment and feminist standpoint during qualitative research. Dr. Loveikaite's professional background is in social care and early childhood. Her research interests lie in the areas of gender and media, identity and youth studies, feminist methodology, creative methods, and discourse analysis.

Dr. Loveikaite teaches/taught the following subjects:

Sociology of Contemporary Ireland (Level 8), Interdisciplinary Seminars (Level 8), Race and Ethnicity (Level 8), Modernisation and Social Change (Level 7), Social Facts and Structures (Level 7), Key Themes in Sociology (Level 7), Sociology of Gender (Level 8), Personal and Professional Development (Level 7/8), Key Academic Skills (Level 7), Exploring Contemporary Social care Issues in Ireland (Level 8), Social Research Methods (Level 8), MA by Research Supervision

Since 2014 Dr. Loveikaite has been lecturing Social Care, Social Science and Psychology Degree students at SETU and throughout her employment, she always aims to incorporate her research findings during the lectures so to showcase the current research being conducted in the area of youth identity and feminist methodology, as well as educate future practitioners on the best practice when working with young people.  Moreover, in 2015 and 2017 she was invited to facilitate workshops for Social Care and Early Childhood Studies students at the University of Leuven in Belgium on topics of evidence-based engagement with young people and social media. The workshops were important in raising awareness about young people’s lived experiences on social media and the methods that Social Care and Early Childhood practitioners could utilise when working with such a cohort.

To date Dr. Loveikatie has had 3 postgraduate students (2 PhD and 1 MA by research).

Dr. Loveikatie's research focuses on the issues of gender, identity, embodiment, young peoples’ lived experiences, media discourses and social media. For Dr. Loveikatie's  PhD, she utilised feminist Foucauldian theory as well as phenomenological hermeneutic approach. Her strengths are in qualitative research, in particular, qualitative interviewing, and TA as the analysis method.