The American Conference for Irish Studies is pleased to introduce the recipients of the 2014 Larkin and Krause graduate research fellowships. These fellowships, awarded annually in support of doctoral research on topics relating to Ireland and the Irish Diaspora, were announced at the June 2014 annual general meeting of ACIS.

Krause Fellowship
Awarded in support of topics relating to Irish literature, this year’s Krause Fellowship recipient is Nathaniel Myers of the University of Notre Dame. Myers’s project examines the elegiac works of five British and Irish poets in the latter half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century in order to reconsider the relationship between language, lyric, and mourning that has been fundamental to much recent elegy criticism. Poets of specific interest include Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, and Medbh McGuckian. With the support of the Krause research fellowship, he is currently undertaking archival research at Emory University’s MARBL library, looking specifically at the notebooks, correspondence, and manuscripts of these three poets.

Larkin Fellowship
The Larkin Fellowship, established in support of research in history or the social sciences, has been awarded this year to Laura Levon of the University at Buffalo, SUNY. LeVon’s dissertation research analyzes the relationship between memory and identity in the aftermath of Northern Ireland’s violent conflicts, highlighting the important role that narratives of memory play in the on-going identity negotiations of young Protestant adults in everyday life. Combining the anthropological methods of participant-observation and interviews with archival research, her findings will illuminate the influence young people have on the social and political transformations taking place not only in Northern Ireland, but also in other communities divided by violent conflict around the globe. LeVon plans to use the fellowship for several weeks of field research in Northern Ireland this June to July.

ACIS congratulates both fellows for their hard work in developing these projects, and wishes them good luck in completing the next stage of their research.