Sheelah Connolly was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Health, Queens University Belfast (QUB). She completed undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Economics at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), a Masters degree in Health Economics at the University of York and a PhD in Public Health at QUB. She has lectured Economics at the NUIG and QUB. Her research to date has largely focused on the interplay between area and health which has led to an interest in how health systems operate across regions. Sheelah recently took up a research position at the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, NUIG.