Fiona McDermott is a Research Fellow, where she contributes to the EU Horizon 2020 research project Artsformation and to the Network Ecologies working group at CONNECT.

Her research explores emerging internet technologies from an interdisciplinary perspective, paying attention to the environmental, spatial and socio-cultural dimensions of technological development. She was a member of the curatorial team for the Irish national pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021. As a 2017-2018 Environmental Protection Agency sponsored Fulbright visiting scholar at the New School in New York City, she studied the application of Internet of Things technologies to urban infrastructures in the public realm.

She completed her PhD “Waste of Time – Examining the Politics and Temporal Practices of Smart Cities Through Urban Sanitation Systems” at CONNECT. Previously she worked as a researcher at the University of Limerick and before engaging in academia, she worked for urban design and landscape architecture practices in Germany, Denmark and the UK. She holds a Masters of Architecture in Urban Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.