PhD student Siobhán Callaghan - Awarded Yale-TCD Alumni Bursary for Research in Children’s Literature 2019/20

Congratulations to PhD student Siobhán Callaghan who was recently awarded the 2019/20 Yale-TCD Bursary for Research in Children’s Literature. The bursary is designed to encourage and facilitate collaborative research on the children’s book collections in TCD and Yale, and is jointly funded by the School of English (TCD) and the Beinecke Library (Yale). Siobhán will travel to Yale later this year to work on the Betsy Beinecke Shirley Collection of American Children’s Literature.

Siobhán’s PhD project investigates the representation of the displaced child in historical fiction for children set during the Second World War. Her research at Yale will examine the displaced child of the Second World War in American children’s literature. The Betsy Beinecke Shirley Collection of American Children’s Literature holds a number of early examples of the construction of European displaced children for an American child readership, as well as key material pertaining to the configuration of U.S Japanese interment in American children’s literature. 

On accepting the award, Siobhán remarked, “I am very grateful to both the School of English and to Yale for this fantastic opportunity! The Shirley Collection is an invaluable resource for children’s literature scholars and I can’t wait to get started.”