Dr Marek McGann
More information
Marek has been a lecturer in the Department of Psychology since 2005. His principal research is theoretical work on the enactive approach to cognitive science, which examines the mind more as something we do rather than something we have. This is also related to ecological approaches to psychology, which explore how behaviour and mental life can be examined by looking at what your head is in, rather than what is in your head. He also has a related interest in critical considerations of theory and scientific practice in psychology more broadly.
Marek co-convenes the ENSO Seminars, a series of online seminars with researchers from enactive and ecological cognitive science.
Marek played a founding role in the development of of T-REX, the Teachers' Research Exchange. T-REX is an online community of practice for education research in Ireland. It aims to support improved practice in education research by enabling better communication and integration between academic education research and professional practice in classrooms.
Selected Publications
Book
Speelman, C.P. & McGann, M. (2025). The Great Psychology Delusion: Missteps, Pitfalls, and How to Make a More Successful Psychological Science. Routledge.
Recent Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
McGann, M. (2024a). Facing life: The messy bodies of enactive cognitive science. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-024-09958-x
McGann, M. (2024b). Reorienting psychological science. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 379(1910), 20230288. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2023.0288
Speelman, C. P., Parker, L., Rapley, B. J., & McGann, M. (2024). Most psychological researchers assume their samples are ergodic: Evidence from a year of articles in three major journals. Collabra: Psychology, 10(1), 92888. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.92888
Vassilicos, B., & McGann, M. (2023). Qualities of consent: An enactive approach to making better sense. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-023-09897-z
McHugh, C., McGann, M., Igou, E. R., & Kinsella, E. L. (2022). Moral judgment as categorization (MJAC). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(1), 131–152. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691621990636
Moore, S., Speelman, C. P., & McGann, M. (2023). Pervasiveness of effects in sample-based experimental psychology: A Re-examination of replication data from nine famous psychology experiments. New Ideas in Psychology, 68, 100978. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2022.100978
Chapters in Edited Books
McGann, M. (2025). Noise, the Mess, and the Inexhaustible World. In B. Vassilicos, G. Torre, & F. T. Pellizzer (Eds.), The Experience of Noise: Philosophical and Phenomenological Perspectives (pp. 177–194). Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-82802-7_8
