PhD student Rebecca Long - Awarded Yale-TCD Alumni Bursary for Research in Children’s Literature 2016/17

Congratulations to Rebecca Long who has been awarded this year’s Yale-TCD Alumni Bursary for Research in Children’s Literature. Rebecca, a PhD student at the School of English, is working on cultural heritage and mythological narratives in Irish Children’s Literature under the supervision of Dr Amanda Piesse. The Yale-TCD bursary is designed to encourage and facilitate collaborative research on the children’s collections in TCD and Yale and facilitates travel to work on the Betsy Beinecke Shirley Collection of American Children's Literature at Yale University.

Rebecca’s research in the US will examine representations of physical and metaphysical landscape in American children’s books that are influenced by mythological narratives, with a specific focus on the connections between exploration, discovery, and re-imagination in traditional and contemporary texts for children. Her research will engage with Series I and II of the Shirley Collection, which deal with authors and illustrators for children from 1719-2001, and American history and educational materials respectively.

Rebecca is the fourth student from the School to be awarded the bursary. It is open to full-time registered students in the School of English who are engaged in an independent research project in children’s literature - e.g. a final year undergraduate dissertation, Masters or PhD thesis - within the School. It is hoped that applications for the 2017/18 bursary will open in Spring 2017.