Before coming to Smith in 2016, Denys had a decades long career as a community organizer focused on Creative Regeneration, the process of collaboratively designing and deploying resident-driven initiatives in communities impacted by disinvestment, demolition and displacement. He founded a consulting cooperative based in Pittsburgh, PA that joined with residents and public and private sector stakeholders to pilot innovative initiatives addressing interdependent aspects of community health - economic, ecological, physiological (incorporating mental health), educational and socio-cultural. This work emerged as a laboratory of sorts for addressing the abandonment by capital of post-industrial places. It included brokering ethical partnerships between regions, neighborhoods and universities. He was a lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh, visiting scholar at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and the National University of Ireland (his home country).  Selected projects included:

• Working at the intersection of restoration ecology and economic development, Denys co-founded and coordinated “Find the Rivers!” with Pittsburgh community organizer Terri Baltimore. FTR! is a resident-driven place-based initiative to repair a community’s social fabric and attract capital investment targeted to residents’ priorities in Pittsburgh’s historic Hill District. He co-led Greenprint, an award-winning design framework for community based ecological restoration and capital investment. 
• At the request of civic leaders concerned about gang proliferation in Wilkinsburg, PA (pop 15,000), he conceptualized and implemented Random Acts of Kindness, a town-wide arts and civic engagement project that deployed kindness as a core organizing practice leading to bolstered social capital and involvement among 1,200 youth and 300 adults (per independent evaluations).
• Collaboratively designed and facilitated with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center faculty trans-national symposia, “Social Inclusion and Mental Health” and “Community Health in Post Industrial Places.” The symposia convened users of public health services along with federal, state and local officials, academic researchers and health providers from the United States and United Kingdom. 
• Collaboratively designed and implemented with University of Pittsburgh Creative Writing faculty and students Confluence, a musical and literary project aimed at transforming race relations in a city. Project events drew over 400 participants diverse in race, class, gender, education, religion, and national origin. 
• Provided training and consultation to the National Council for Social Services, Singapore, on enabling conditions for expanding partnerships in the Social Services sector.

Selected publications

Partnerships and Processes of Engagement, Working as Consultants in the US and UK, with Jeremy Kearney (2004) in University-Community Partnerships: Universities in Civic Engagement (ed: Tracy M. Soska, and Alice K. Johnson Butterfield) The Haworth Social Work Practice Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 2004, pp. 181-201 

Beyond Planning, with Reiko Goto (2011) Public Art Scotland, available from Smith College Jandon Center for Community Engagement jcce@smith.edu

Reframing Power (2012) in Emejulu, A. Community Development in the Steel City: Democracy, Justice and Power in Pittsburgh, Community Development Journal Inc., Edinburgh, UK