IIHSA Travel Bursary Awards 2023

Congratulations to the winners of this year’s IIHSA Jason O’Brien travel bursaries, Amy O’Keeffe (TCD) and Isabella Thorpe (UCD).

Amy O’Keeffe is a first-year PhD student at the Department of Classics, Trinity College Dublin (2022- ).

Amy’s research topic is ‘The (In)Tangible Body: Representations and Scholarly Attitudes Towards Body Modification in the Ancient Mediterranean’. This project will address the archaeological evidence for artificial cranial modification, tattooing, and other types of modification. It will also address the way these practices have been written about and interpreted, by exploring the historiography of the topic. By using a multidisciplinary approach to the evidence, as well as critiquing past scholarship, a more cohesive and nuanced representation will be possible. While at the IIHSA, she will spend her time in Athens accessing the many museums to investigate relevant artefacts, as well as accessing library resources.

Isabella Thorpe is an MA student (2022-23) in the School of Classics, University College Dublin.

Isabella’s thesis topic is centred around the encroaching control of Athenian power through the study of religious festivals, especially the regulation of First Fruits at Eleusis. Both epigraphical and literary sources will be used as methodologies for this topic. She will use the bursary as a chance to explore the various museums, and the archaeological sites first-hand in Athens. She also hopes to make some trips to other sites such as the archaeological site at Eleusis. She plans to make the most of the resources that the other institutes provide in their libraries in order to research her thesis further.