Derek Byrne M.Sc. is an Academic and Journalist working and living in Dublin. He has over twenty years’ experience working in the community and voluntary sector and is currently employed on a part-time basis as the LGBT+ Education Officer with Men’s Aid. Derek also teaches on the Addiction Studies programme in the department of Adult & Community Education at Maynooth University and is an experienced Journalist and Broadcaster.

Since joining Men’s Aid in April 2022, Derek has designed and delivered a range of workshops to an Garda Siochana, domestic violence service providers, LGBT+ organisations, third level institutions and social workers.

The workshops focus on the prevalent and unique factors of domestic violence in an LGBT+ context and explore structural inequalities that can lead to a lack of help-seeking and facilitate invisibility of this cohort in terms of service provision, resources, and policy development.

Derek is an advocate for greater service provision for members of the LGBT+ community who are disabled and those living with HIV. His specific area of interest is the role of internalised homophobia in the perpetration of IPV among gay and bisexual men and the links between Intimate Partner Violence, Coercive Control and HIV transmission among gbMSM.