Professor Mary P. Corcoran is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. She is a graduate of the University of Dublin, Trinity College and Columbia University, New York. Her research and teaching interests lie primarily in the fields of urban sociology, although she has also researched migration and professional media cultures. She has participated in a number of national and international research projects exploring aspects of the urban environment, from quality of life in social housing to urban regeneration and the significance of place. The author of numerous scholarly articles and reports, Corcoran is the co-editor (with Michel Peillon) of Uncertain Ireland (2006); Place and non-place. The Reconfiguration of Ireland (2004); and Ireland Unbound: a turn of the century chronicle (2002) all published by the Institute of Public Administration. She is also the co-editor (with Mark O’Brien) of Censorship and the Democratic State, published in 2005 by Four Courts Press, Dublin. Corcoran’s earlier seminal book, Irish Illegals: Transients Between Two Societies (CT: Greenwood Press, 1993) charted the labour market and socio-ethnic experiences of undocumented Irish people in New York City during the 1980s. Mary P. Corcoran was a Taoiseach’s nominee to the National Economic and Social Forum from 2004-2006. She appears occasionally as a social commentator on Irish radio and television.