Sinéad McCoole was born in New York City to Irish parents in 1968.
[2] She has cited Margaret Mac Curtain as a strong influence on her work.
[4] Her work interviewing witnesses and gathering primary material relating to the women involved in the Easter Rising, the War of Independence, the Civil War and the early independent Irish State continued with her work curating of the Guns and Chiffon exhibition in Kilmainham Gaol from 1994 to the exhibition launch with her book of the same title in 1997.
Since 2012, McCoole has been a member of the Irish government's Expert Advisory Group on the Decade of Centenaries, and served as historical advisor for the 2016 National Commemoration Programme.
[10] She was the curator of the Jackie Clarke Collection in Ballina[5][11] having been involved in the assessment, care, and eventual exhibition of the archive from 2005.