BAIS Postgraduate Bursary Scheme

Our Postgraduate Bursary Award Scheme, has become the major scheme of its kind in the UK. Each year, we make significant funds available to students researching Irish-related topics at British universities. We aim to support research that uncovers new or neglected areas in the field.

As an applicant, you are encouraged to produce a specific and targeted funding request, detailing how the award will support your research. Your applications will be assessed by a panel of important international academics, ensuring that this is a valuable award in more ways than one. We are keen to recognise the diversity of work taking place on Irish culture and society when coming to our final decision. In any one year we usually give bursaries to between three and five winners (sums are usually between £300–£1000). The bursaries are presented to successful candidates by the Irish Ambassador to Great Britain, at our Awards Ceremony held at the Irish Embassy in London.

The scheme has given rise to important research which has been published internationally. A number of the students it has helped in the past are now lecturing in the field of Irish Studies at universities in Britain and Ireland.

Students may apply to use the bursary for travel expenses, payment of fees, subsistence or other expenses related to the completion of their research projects. Applicants must be members of the British Association for Irish Studies (or should join when they apply). Applicants will be required to submit a completed Application Form together with two completed forms from referees, who will be required to send these direct to the Chair of the Bursaries Committee. The decision of the BAIS Postgraduate Bursaries Committee will be final.

The deadline for submission of applications is 12 March 2010, and the awards will be announced in April 2010.

For more information on the competition for 2010, and an application form, please contact the Chair of the Bursaries Committee: Professor Maria Luddy, Department of History, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL. (02476) 522542, m.luddy@warwick.ac.uk.

BAIS Postgraduate Bursaries 2010

Photographs of the 2010 awards ceremony will be posted soon…

Winners

Hilary Bishop (University of Liverpool), Thesis: Mass Rock Sites in the Penal Era, 1650 - 1750

Mary Jane Boland (University of Nottingham), Thesis: Understanding Genre Painting in Ireland, c.1780 - c.1850

Brynhildur Boyce (Goldsmith’s, University of London), Thesis: Communication in Samuel Beckett’s Radio Plays

William Ferguson (Cambridge University), Thesis: Scottish Influence on Irish Politics & Religion, 1649 - 1660

Kate Lynch (University of Nottingham), Thesis: Irish Missionary Nuns in Ireland: The Mission Fields

Jennifer Orr (University of Glasgow), Thesis: A Revisionist Reading of the Life and Works of Samuel Thompon, An Ulster Poet, 1766 - 1816

Bryan Radley (University of York), Thesis: Comedy in the Fiction of John Banville

Matthew Whiting (LSE), Thesis: Explaining Radical Ethno-Nationalist Political Moderation: The Case of Sinn Fein in Comparative Perspective

BAIS Postgraduate Bursaries 2009

Photographs of the 2009 awards ceremony are available here

Winners

Olive Barnes (Oxford Brookes University), Thesis: The Catholic Church in England

Niall Carson (Liverpool University), Thesis: The Bell: Ireland’s Voice

Mary Gemma Clark (Oxford University), Thesis: Social and political violence within the local community - Irish Civil War

Erika Hanna (Oxford University), Thesis: Planning, Preservation and Heritage in Dublin, 1950-1980

Anna Hoare (UCL), Thesis: Making Space: changing forms of architecture and mobility among Irish Travellers in the UK and Ireland’

Paul Jones (York University), Thesis: Joyce’s Forgings: Literature, Interpretation, Irish Identity

John Paul McCarthy (Oxford University), Thesis: Gladstone’s Irish Questions: An Historical Approach, 1830-1886

Patrick Wadden (Oxford University), Thesis: Irish Ethnographic Writing during the 11th and 12th centuries

Theresa Wray (Cardiff University), Thesis: Realist Modes in the work of Mary Lavin

BAIS Postgraduate Bursaries 2008

Photographs of the 2008 awards ceremony are available here

Henrietta Ewart, University of Warwick. Thesis: Caring for Social Casualities: How Irish Migrant Welfare Policy was Shaped in Britain, 1940-2000

James Golden, Hertford College, University of Oxford. Thesis: Protestantism and Public Life: The Church of Ireland, 1881-1911

Angela Claire Moran, St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, Thesis: The Music of the Irish Diaspora in Post-War Birmingham (1950-2000)

Adam Putz, Department of English, University of Warwick. Thesis: Shakespeare’s Wake: A Cultural History of Ireland since 1616

Thomas Walker, Lincoln College, Oxford. Thesis: Louis MacNiece and Irish Poetry

Mark Williams, Hertford College, Oxford. Thesis: ‘The King’s Irishmen’: The Roles and Impact of the Irish in the Exiled Court of Charles II, 1649-1660

BAIS Postgraduate Bursaries 2007

Benjamin Bankhurst, King’s College, University of London. Thesis: Religion, Republicanism and Exile: America in the Ulster Presbyterian Imagination, 1760 – 1820

Stephen Forrest, Hertford College, University of Oxford. Thesis: Crossing the North Channel: How the Island Scots of Antrim Stayed Irish

Ciaran O’Neill, Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool. Thesis: Varsities: the Education of the Irish Catholic Elite at Home and Abroad (1850 – 1900)

Winners of the BAIS Postgraduate Bursary Scheme 2006

Aisling Molloy is a student at the Royal College of Art in London. Aisling is working on material culture, specifically the ceramic designer Frederick Vodrey in late 19thc Dublin

Lauren Arrington (St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford), for her project on the Abbey Theatre 1914–1939.

Monica Facchinello (University of York), for her project on John Banville.

Ruth Kenny (University of Nottingham), for her project on Hugh Douglas Hamilton.

Michael McCabe (Hertford College, University of Oxford), who is researching religious Republicanism in the early Free State.

Whitney Standlee, (University of Central Lancashire), whose research is on George Egerton.

Tara Stubbs, (St John’s College, University of Oxford), for her project on Marianne Moore and American-Irish inheritance.

Winners of the BAIS Postgraduate Bursary Scheme 2005

Aisling Molloy is a student at the Royal College of Art in London. Aisling is working on material culture, specifically the ceramic designer Frederick Vodrey in late 19thc Dublin

Emily Cuming studies at the University of Manchester and is completing a thesis on contemporary Irish autobiography.

Tony Murray is a student at Staffordshire University working on the literature of the Irish diaspora in London.

Cary Shay studies at the university of Kent and is working on a study of the Irish language poet Nuala ni Dhomhnaill.

Kate Moles is a research student at Cardiff University working on contemporary environmentalism in Ireland and specifically Phoenix Park in Dublin

Helen Imhoff is at Newnham College, Cambridge studying paganism in medieval Irish literature

Winners of the BAIS Postgraduate Bursary Scheme 2004

Lisa Godson (Royal College of Art): ‘Public events and ceremonies in the Irish Free State between 1922–49’

James Powell (St Antony’s College Oxford). ‘Irish-American emigration and the cultural renaissance between 1891 and 1916’

Aurelia Spottiswoode Annat (Oxford). ‘History, identity and Irish women writers, 1891-1945’

Daniel Jackson (Northumbria University). ‘Anti-Home Rule campaigns in Britain, 1910-1914’

Stephen Dornan (University of Aberdeen). ‘Irish and Scottish poetry in the 18th/19th Century’