Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland Essay Prize

The SSNCI Essay Prize 2023 has been awarded to Dr Sophie Cooper (QUB) for their article ‘Something borrowed: women, Limerick lace and community heirlooms in the Australian Irish diaspora’, which was published in Social History.

The judges noted:

“This article provides a fresh perspective on the material culture of faith, ethnicity and gender through an innovative transnational lens. Drawing on the case of Limerick lace veil, the author examines the ways in which Irish female religious orders used Catholic materiality to maintain connections between former students and the wider Irish Catholic community within Australia. In doing so, the article recasts Limerick lace around a set of practices predominantly shaped by women in Ireland and in Australia and with implications for the study of material culture in Irish and wider diasporic contexts. [We] appreciated the way the article broke new ground in combining a novel focus on materiality with that of gender, diaspora and religion, bringing new concepts and approaches into conversation with major themes in Irish and diasporic historiography.”