Provost Patrick Prendergast this morning announced the election of 57 Scholars, 14 Fellows, five Professorial Fellows and three Honorary Fellows, in a Front Square that was near-empty as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and closure of the College.
Prendergast made the announcement – a longstanding College tradition, which kicks off Trinity Week – from the steps of the Exam Hall, with students and staff tuning in online to hear the announcement.
The number of Scholars fell by one this year, with 58 elected last year.
The Honorary Fellowships were awarded to astrophysicist Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell, economist Prof John Fitzgerald and Neil Mendoza, the provost of Oriel College in Oxford.
Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars in 1967 while still a graduate student, is a longtime advocate for women in science and was involved in the creation of gender equality’s Athena SWAN Charter.
Fitzgerald is a research affiliate at the Economic and Social Research Institute, a Trinity adjunct professor and the chair of Ireland’s Climate Change Advisory Council.
The announcement took place in a near-empty Front Square.
Prendergast said Trinity is “extremely proud of the hard work and impressive achievements of all the students and academics who have been named Scholars and Fellows”.
“We are very sorry that circumstances mean they cannot be here in person for this special occasion”, he said, “but we offer them our warmest congratulations nonetheless”.
To be eligible for scholarship in most cases, a second-year student must achieve an overall mark of 70 per cent or higher in a set of optional “searching” examinations, with the majority of their papers also receiving a mark of 70 per cent or higher. The remaining papers must receive a mark of 65 per cent or higher.
Trinity calls election to scholarship “the most prestigious undergraduate award in the country”.
The announcement of Fellows and Scholars, which marks the beginning of Trinity Week, was followed by a Service of Commemoration and Thanksgiving in the Chapel, which was also live streamed.
Oisín Horgan, Beaven Ankner-Edelstein, Róisín Barrett, Jane Cook, Conor Leon, Fionn O’Sullivan, Rhianna Corcoran, Monica Dalton, Ellen McGee, Michael MacNulty, John Burke, Matthew Howard, David Nugent, Adam Ogórek, Ahmed Hussein, Ronan Dunne, Grace Murphy, Emmet Murphy, Liam Ó Comáin, Linde Vergeylen, Rebecca Payling, Beatrice Campbell, Benjamin Conlon, Eoin Jackson, Rachel O’Leary, Matthew O’Shea, Saoirse Flattery, Emilie Oudart, Michael O’Callaghan, Caoimhín Scanlon, Yvonne Buttle, Basem Fouda, Angela Joy, Matthew Laffey, Liam Mariga, Iyad Marzoug O’Brien, Oisin O’Connor, Darragh O’Dowd, Katherine White, Chidera Muodebe, Jessica Prendergast, Rebecca Sanfey, Meabh Bonham Corcoran, Alexandra Solovyeva, Kealan Ó Tiarnaigh, James O’Donnell, Ellen McHugh, Tom McCarthy, Lorraine Vaughan, Grace Banks, Anthony Bradley, Aoibhe De Burca, Aisling Foley Rooney, Louisa Klatt, Claire Morgan-Busher, Roísín Ryan and Daniel Vives Lynch were elected Scholars today.
