We begin again our BAIS PGR bursary prize winners blog post series. Each year we ask our bursary prize winners to write up a short post on how they spent their bursary funds. This year we begin with Henry Theakston (University of Leeds), for whom the BAIS bursary supported his archival research in London:

Receiving the BAIS bursary award was an important part of my journey towards completing my Master’s by Research thesis on the Easter Rising. The research activities it supported enabled me to access valuable primary sources and develop a richer understanding of the Rising, its planning and its legacy. The award supported two research trips to London, the first to view a range of British Government records on the Rising held in the British Library, including Cabinet memoranda on the Rising and its aftermath, and reports on the executions of the Rising’s leaders. During the second research trip to London, I visited the National Archives to view sources including Dublin Metropolitan Police reports on the activities and speeches of Sinn Féin activists following the Rising. These sources complemented previously completed research and contributed to the overall comprehensive nature of my findings. 

The BAIS bursary award also alleviated resource constraints that previous research trips to Dublin, London and Nottingham had caused. These previous research activities allowed me to view a wide of range of primary and secondary sources, including the Roger Casement papers in the National Library of Ireland, newspaper cuttings relating to the Rising held in the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, and diaries and memoirs of British soldiers who fought during the Rising held in various sites across London and Nottingham.

The award of the BAIS bursary did not just enable a deeper exploration of the Easter Rising, it had the intangible benefit of boosting my confidence in my own research abilities. I submitted my Master’s by Research thesis in October 2023 and await confirmation of my final result.

Henry Theakston has recently completed an MRes in History at the University of Leeds. His project seeks to place the Easter Rising in a broader context of international conflict, to understand how the Rising was viewed by contemporaries, on all sides, as part of the First World War.

*Image by Tal/Epic/Mary Evans, courtesy of the New Statesman