BAIS Prize-Giving 2019

Posted on by bairishstudies

On 16th May 2019, we held our Annual Prizegiving Ceremony in the Embassy of Ireland in London. The Council of BAIS would like to thank the Embassy for making us feel so welcome, particularly Ambassador Adrian O’Neill, Ruaidhri Dowling, Rachel Ingersoll and Gerry Doherty. Ambassador O’Neill’s warm, thoughtful words encouraged us in our efforts to illuminate Irish issues across Britain.

We would also like to thank Professor Claire Connolly (UCC and current Parnell Fellow at Magdalen College, Cambridge) for her stirring, vital address which asked us to think again about Irish Studies in our current political moment.

Finally, we would like to thank our members and supporters for taking the time to support us and our emerging scholars. It was wonderful to share their successes with colleagues from the Irish Studies Review, EFACIS and long-standing friends of BAIS. We look forward to seeing you all for our 35th Anniversary events in 2020.

IMG_4545

The BAIS Council presented three categories of awards: postgraduate bursaries, a postgraduate essay prize and our inaugural book prize.

We are pleased to announce our bursary winners for 2019, which will be presented at the Embassy of Ireland on 16th May 2019. This was an exceptionally competitive field and we thank Dr Erika Hanna (Bristol) for chairing our panel of judges as they made their decisions.
  • Jess McIvor (Southampton): ‘Women at war: Comparing the representation of Irish and Spanish Women combatants in visual and memory culture’
  • James Bright (Edinburgh): ‘Loyalty in Captivity: Ideas and Identity among Ulster Loyalist paramilitary prisoners, 1968-1998’
  • Victoria Brown (QMUL): ‘Visibility and belonging – The English in Ireland since 1960’
  • Beth Kitson (Oxford): ‘The Lives of Irish Women in the Late Nineteenth Century: A Transnational and Comparative Approach’
  • Daniel Booker (Bristol): ‘Bureaucracy and Power: The Exchequer and King John (1199-1216)’
  • Rachel Kowalski (Oxford): ‘Micro-Patterns of Violence; Disaggregating the Provisional Irish Republican Army campaign, 1969-1979’
  • Aimee Walsh (LJMU): ‘Republican Feminism(s): Literature and Women’s History of the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ conflict’

IMG_4546

Kieran McMorran (Liverpool) won our postgraduate essay prize BAIS Essay Prize for his essay ‘‘A German Bred Revolt’: The Manchester Guardian’s Perceptions of the Irish Easter Rising, 1916. We thank Derval Tubridy (Goldsmiths) for chairing our judging panel.

17c034cd-8379-45eb-8a75-578068873424

The British Association for Irish Studies is proud to announce that the winner of its inaugural book prize is Dr Sarah Jankowitz (Liverpool) for her study The Order of Victimhood: Violence, Hierarchy and Building Peace in Northern Ireland (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). In praising the book, one judge commented that ‘This research is of great significance in terms of its applications to the peace process. Through its focus on “re-humanising the other” and “thicker reconciliation” this book provides sociologists and other social scientists with fruitful and flexible categories of analysis.’
4d62332f-f334-4875-8fd7-3e5badedd47e
In a tight contest, Dr George Legg’s (KCL) Northern Ireland and the Politics of Boredom: Conflict, Capital and Culture (Manchester University Press, 2018) was Highly Commended. One judge praised the book’s significance: ‘In that the book rethinks Northern Ireland in terms other than the established one of political divisions it is already significant. In that it focuses on a potentially progressive mode of understanding actualities which transcend old binaries it is doubly significant.’ As Dr Legg is our Treasurer, his book was judged by distinguished academics from outside the BAIS Executive Council. We thank Nick Taylor-Collins (Swansea) for chairing our judging panel, and all the prize judges who gave up their time to read the many entries.
ecc9f207-5fb1-429e-8fb2-8c623a632ed3

Leave a comment