Three NUI Postdoctoral fellowship awards on the way to the Moore Institute NUI Galway

The Moore Institute is delighted to announce that in 2017 it is to host the recipients of three of the four Postdoctoral Fellowships awarded by the National University of Ireland in November 2016. The awardees, Dr. Bronagh McShane (Humanities), Dr. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile and Dr. Niamh Wycherley (both Irish and Celtic Studies) will be joining the Institute’s vibrant research community in the coming months.

Prof Daniel Carey, Director of the Moore Institute welcomed the news:

“We’re delighted to welcome three outstanding scholars to the Moore Institute whose work has been recognised by the National University of Ireland with the award of prestigious Post-Doctoral Fellowships. Their work, ranging across medieval, early modern, and modern history, literature and culture (in Irish and English) coincides with core commitments of the Moore Institute and builds on a tradition of scholarship and engagement here.”

Dr Deirdre Ní Chonghaile will collaborate with Dr Lillis Ó Laoire (School of Languages, Literatures & Culture) on expanding her research on Irish cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries by investigating the Rev. Murphy Collection. Dr. Ní Chonghaile’s work focuses on voices, contemporary and historical, especially those that have been marginalized, and on what they have to say or sing. She is hoping to develop the Rev. Murphy collection into an open-access resource that promises to inspire a major re-assessment of Irish and Irish-American history, focusing especially on language and performance practices, migration, assimilation, and identity in a global context

Working with Prof Marie-Louise Coolahan (School of Humanities), Dr Bronagh McShane will study the experiences and activities of Irish women religious from the early sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. A social historian specialising in the history of women, religion and confessionalisation in early modern Ireland and Europe, Dr McShane’s project will provide a comprehensive, long-term study of the experiences and activities of Irish women religious from 1530 down to the mid-eighteenth century, a period of tumultuous religious change and upheaval.

Dr Niamh Wycherley who will work with Prof. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (School of Humanities) will look at constructing the first detailed analysis of the terminology and language relating to the cult of relics in early Ireland, from the fifth to the twelfth century. Dr Wycherley’s project will construct the first detailed analysis of the terminology and language relating to the cult of relics in early Ireland, from the fifth to the twelfth century.