About this prize
The Catherine Shannon Prize, funded by a generous donation from the Charitable Irish Society, awards $500 each year to an ACIS member to help offset the costs of attending our annual
national conference. Scholars who receive little to no institutional funding for conferences are eligible to apply. Preference will be given to untenured faculty, graduate students,
independent scholars without full-time employment, retired academics, and international scholars. Recipients must be members of ACIS at the time of the award.
Prof. Catherine Shannon studied at the University of Toronto, University College Dublin and U-Mass Amherst before pursuing a four decades-long teaching career at Westfield State
University, Massachusetts, where she started in 1967. Across that time, she developed an innovative and multi-disciplinary Irish American Studies Program that introduced students to
Irish music and literature and the Irish language, as well as Irish and British History. She was also a driving force behind the establishment, in 1987, of an Honors Program at Westfield State,
and as a study abroad advisor, she continued her connections with Irish Studies, arranging for many Westfield students to study or to carry out teaching internships in Ireland. From 1982
onwards, she organized the Symposium on Northern Ireland at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. These events, which brought Irish and British representatives together to discuss
contemporary political issues, deepened Prof. Shannon’s connections to the Charitable Irish Society. She would go on to serve as the first ever female President of the Society; she has
been an active member since 1985.
Prize Committee and Information
To apply to the Catherine Shannon Award, please submit a current CV as well as a 2-page letter explaining your current and past academic research, how your proposed paper presentation at
our conference fits with that larger work and what you hope to gain in terms of feedback or professional development from attending our conference. Applicants can also include any
information, if applicable, about other funding they have secured, applied for, or will apply for (institutional and external), as well as their rank/title and employment status.
Awardees can use the funds for any aspect of their travel to the national ACIS conference (including, but not limited to, transport, accommodation, and conference registration fees). The
prize will be distributed at the conference. The deadline for applications is January 1, 2026.
Committee
Lucy McDiarmid, Montclair State University
James S. Rogers, St. Thomas University
Mary Trotter, University of Wisconsin