The Mary Mulvihill Award was established to commemorate Mary Mulvihill, honour her legacy and, at the same time, encourage a new generation of science communicators and journalists to develop their skills.
The award is open to students – undergraduate and postgraduate – attending any third-level institution on the island of Ireland. In keeping with Mary’s wide-ranging experience in print, broadcast and digital media, the award programme has from the outset invited entries produced in any media format.
The theme of the award changes every year, to reflect Mary’s broad set of interests in science and its interrelationships with other aspects of human culture and the natural world. The topics to date have been: Women and science; Science – whose facts? Whose truth?; Science for the love of It; Virus and Water.
The quality of the winning entries has been consistently high and several of the award winners have received additional recognition for their work elsewhere. Irene Fogarty, who won the award as an MA student in World Heritage Management and Conservation at UCD in 2017, also won the graduate student category in an essay competition organised by the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) Science and Human Rights Coalition. Laura Katherine Finnegan, a PhD student in Genetics at TCD and a talented science illustrator, won the award in 2019 for a sampler of an illustrated children’s book on prominent Irish scientists. In 2021, she was invited by the Department of Health to participate in a science communication initiative on COVID-19 and vaccines for young audiences.
The award programme continues to attract talented students, who have taken this opportunity to explore science communication more fully, and some of whom may pursue careers in this field.
2019 Mary Mulvihill Award Winners Emily Sheridan and Laura Katharine Finnegan
Find out more about our Award winners and their entries:
