Biographical Notes
Caroline Jagoe Sherman
Editor
Caroline Jagoe Sherman is an Associate Professor in Trinity College Dublin, a visiting scholar in the School of Human &
Community Development at the University of the Witwatersrand,
South Africa (WITS) and co-founder of the SADIE Network. Her work addresses disability rights in situations of risk, including food insecurity and famine, and in justice responses to mass human rights violations. Caroline holds a PhD from Trinity College Dublin, a
Masters in Laws from Maynooth University and a Bachelor’s in
Speech and Hearing Therapy from WITS.
The Right to Food, The Reality of Hunger: Insecurity and Agency At The Margins
Dublin University Press, 2026
Caroline Jagoe Sherman & Claire F. O'Reilly (Editors)
This edited collection explores the disproportionate impact of
food insecurity on groups subjected to exclusion, particularly
persons with disabilities experiencing forms of systemic
marginalisation including (settler-) colonialism and ableism. The
authors, from across academia, practitioner spaces, and civil
society show how margins may be simultaneously sites of
exclusion and injustice, while also offering agency, vision and the
potential to transform food systems toward dignity, inclusion
and accountability.
"This volume is a seminal collection. It follows the principle of
putting the last first - in authorship, sensibility, method, analysis
and recommendations [...] most importantly, this book is a way of
seeding new and better ways of addressing the challenge of global
hunger."
Alex de Waal
Executive Director, World Peace Foundation and author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.
"We live in times when the powerful take delight in destroying
the sense of dignity of the weak. By taking the perspectives of
people with disabilities in contexts of starvation and famine,
this book defies that dehumanizing logic. It makes the case for
disabled persons' agency-and shows how that agency points
the way toward deeply transformative change, one in which
power is made perfect in weakness."
Sofia Monsalve Suarez
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food
ISBN: 978-0-903200-33-2 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-903200-34-9 (ePub)
ISBN: 978-0-903200-35-6 (ePDF)
DOI: 10.82163/226
Pages xxvi, 219
Price: €15 (plus p&p)
Claire F. O'Reilly
Editor
Claire F. O’Reilly, PhD, is a researcher and systems specialist
focused on disability inclusion, food security, healthcare, and the
design of more equitable systems in emergencies. She has worked in
research, policy and humanitarian response with UN agencies and
international organisations in a range of crisis-affected and post-
crisis settings. An adjunct Research Fellow at Trinity College
Dublin, co-founder of the SADIE research network, she currently
works with the World Health Organization in Ukraine, supporting
health-system strengthening in rehabilitation and disability inclusion.