Dowd received her MA in 1997 and her PhD in 2004, both of which were from University College Cork.
Her PhD thesis title was, Caves: Sacred Places in the Irish Landscape.
[1][2] In 2016, Dowd, along with archaeologist, Dr Ruth Carden, analysed a butchered bear bone that had been discovered in a cave in County Clare, Ireland around 100 years before.
Using radiocarbon dating, they established that the bone was 10,000 years old.
This indicated that human occupation of Ireland began 2,000 years earlier than originally thought as previously, the oldest evidence of human habitation in Ireland was 8,000 years old.