The 2021 Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Celtic Studies and Philosophy Research Achievement Award has been made to Professor David Stifter of the School of Celtic Studies. Professor Stifter plays an Internationally prominent role in Old Irish and the Continental Celtic languages making lasting impact in these fields. His handbook Sengoidelc: Old Irish for Beginners has become the standard textbook for teaching the Old Irish language, he was the first person to receive an ERC grant in Celtic Studies for the ChronHib project, and he has produced ground -breaking resources for the study of the Cisalpine Celtic languages. In Maynooth alone, he has mentored over a dozen early career researchers. In total, the amount of project funding that he has acquired exceeds €2.5 million, a figure rarely matched in humanities subjects. His international recognition can be gauged from the fact that he is a collaborator in a number of international research projects with partners in the UK, France, Spain, Italy and Austria. Professor Stifter is a leading figure in the practical application of Digital Humanities in Medieval Irish and Celtic Studies.
The 2021 Early Career Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Celtic Studies and Philosophy Research Achievement Award has been made to Dr Jeneen Naji of the Department of Media Studies. Dr Naji’s research is internationally recognised for advancing the field of electronic literature and digital poetry. Spanning classical and contemporary literary and media texts, from Khalil Gibran’s The Rubayaat and Shakespeare sonnets to drones and ‘othering’ in video games, Dr Naji’s research and creative projects examine diversity in the field of digital aesthetics in relation to gender and cultural difference. Innovative in her integration of humanistic thinking and technological approaches, Dr Naji produces traditional scholarly outputs, including monographs, textbooks, and articles, which have been published by leading presses and journals, as well as innovative practice-based exhibitions in both built and digital environments in association with art and educational organisations in Norway, Portugal, the US and Slovakia. Grounded in both literary and visual analysis, Dr Naji’s scholarship moves fluidly into the newest developments in the digital culture of algorithms, AI, VR, poetry apps, drones, and human-computer interaction. Her exhibition work explores the evolution of aesthetic form and human creativity as they encounter digital tools and platforms.