Conor Murphy

Professor Conor Murphy is a Funded Investigator with the Co-Centre for Climate + Biodiversity + Water. He focuses on hydroclimatology, historical climatology, and adaptation to climate change. Specifically he works on the Hydrological Projections for the British and Irish Isles project and the Islands of Britain and Ireland Climate Dataset project. These are part of the Projects and Monitoring research themes respectively.

His research engages closely with enterprise, public bodies, and communities. Professor Murphy has published more than 120 papers in top-ranking international journals, including Science, Nature, Nature Climate Change, and Nature Geoscience, as well as numerous book chapters and government reports that inform policy. He was the lead author of Volume 3: Being Prepared for Ireland’s Future Climate, as part of the Irish Climate Change Assessment Report (ICCA).

He is also a Professor in the Department of Geography and the ICARUS research centre at Maynooth University. He is the Course Director of the MSc in Climate Change at Maynooth University and sits on the Adaptation Committee of Ireland’s Climate Change Advisory Council (CCAC), advising the government on achieving the national climate objective of a climate-resilient Ireland.

Professor Murphy acted as an advisor to the Government during the development of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2021, which was widely regarded as positioning Ireland at the forefront of global climate action.

He has been awarded over €7 million in funding as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator from both national and European sources.

Professor Murphy has supervised 11 PhDs to completion and more than 10 postdoctoral researchers, each of whom has gone on to successful careers at leading national and international institutions.