Jenny O'Connor has a PhD in Film Studies and is a lecturer in English and Communications in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at South East Technological University. A member of the Analysing Social Change research group, she has recently worked within the Lyrical Bodies project, which involved students and staff from SETU’s School of Humanities, and Dublin Theatre of the Deaf, investigating Waterford playwright Teresa Deevy’s ballet Possession to explore and analyse ableism and gender discrimination towards the Irish Deaf community and Deaf woman via theatre practice research. Her role here was to use digital storytelling to document, reflect on and communicate the experience of the academic project. 

Other collaborations have included an N-TUTORR funded project entitled "Diversifying the curriculum" where she worked alongside Dr Christa de Brún (Lecturer in English) and four student partners to decolonise and diversify the curriculum and the assessment methods for a module on the final year of the English programme.

Considering the impact of GenAI on teaching and learning is something which Dr O'Connor is currently very interested in, and she worked with staff in SETU Carlow on a project that explored the ways in which GenAI might inform the way in which lecturers mark assessment. Alongside this, she has presented on the ways in which GenAI can encourage lecturers and students to think more (rather than less) critically about their own work.

Dr O'Connor is also a member of the Transnational Education and Community Health Collaboratory (TEACH CoLab), a global teaching project that connects staff and students in academia across two institutions (the University of Washington, and SETU campuses in Waterford and Carlow) and examines specific and pertinent health-related issues through a cross-cultural lens. 

Since 2017, she has hosted the English at SETU podcast series The Nerve, and produces an average of five episodes per semester. It has featured interviews and discussions with students and staff of SETU, as well as world-renowned authors and scholars. An upcoming publication explores the ways in which epistemic spaces are created through academic podcasting. 

Dr O'Connor is a member of the PLACE (Practice-led, Active and Creative Engagements) working group, part of Analysing Social Change research group. Within this group, emerging and established researchers work across a number of different projects, using a variety of methodologies to produce both performative and traditionally academic research outputs. One such project is Lyrical Bodies, which involves students and staff from SETU's School of Humanities, and Dublin Theatre of the Deaf investigating Waterford playwright Teresa Deevy’s ballet Possession, a work never yet performed, to explore and analyse ableism and gender discrimination towards the Irish Deaf community and Deaf woman, in theatre practice. Her role here is within a digital storytelling capacity, to document, reflect on and communicate the experience of the academic project. 

Other ongoing research activities include the exploration of epistemic living spaces through podcasting, critical thinking through GenAI, and student/staff collaboration on diversifying the curriculum.

Dr. O'Connor teaches on a variety of modules in the B.A. Arts/Psychology course. These include:

Introduction to Literary Criticism and Composition

Shakespeare: Drama and Film

Literature and Society

Critical Theory and Beyond

Literature of the Family

Independent Literary Study

In addition, she teaches on modules across a range of other courses, including Computer Science (module: Narrative Construction), and Public Health and Health Promotion  (module: Communication and Media Skills; Digital Storytelling Workshop).