DCU and Humanities and Social Sciences well represented at the 2015 Undergraduate Awards

The 2015 Undergraduate Awards ceremony was held in City Hall, Dublin on the evening of 11 November to confer the top performer in each of the twenty-five categories in the competition with their Gold Medal. A total of 5,117 papers were submitted by undergraduates in universities across the globe for scrutiny by the various judging panels. The medals were presented by Uachtarán na hÉireann, Dr Michael D. Higgins, who praised the students for their intellectual curiosity and academic rigour. Noted philosopher, AC Grayling, also addressed the awardees and their guests and spoke eloquently about the quest for knowledge and the love of learning. MC for the evening’s ceremony was Louise Hodgson, Executive Director of the Undergraduate Awards.

Two DCU students were named as Programme Winners in their respective categories. Giulia Luzi, a graduate of SALIS, was named as Programme Winner in the ‘Media and Journalism’ category for a paper entitled ‘Hugo Chávez and the media: How was the media used to influence public opinion on Chávez and his government?’ Giulia is currently involved with Common Ground, an international NGO that works in over 30 countries all over the world to transform the way people deal with conflicts. Cleo Harvey, who graduated from DCU with a BSc in Applied Physics, was Programme Winner in the ‘Mathematics and Physics’ category for a paper entitled ‘Characterisation of metal nanoparticles for Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS)’. During the summer Cleo was awarded the Naughton Scholarship to conduct research in Nanoscience at the University of Notre Dame.

DCU was represented at the ceremony by Prof Brian MacCraith and Dr Ciarán Mac Murchaidh (Head of School in Fiontar), who was chair of the judging panel for ‘Languages and Linguistics’. Staff in various schools across DCU were also involved in judging panels in a wide range of categories: James O’Connor (DCUBS) ‘Business’; Dr Justin Rami (Education Studies) ‘Education’; Dr Diarmuid Torney and Dr Ken McDonagh (Law & Government) ‘Politics & International Relations’; and Dr Sonia Morris (Education, St Patrick’s Campus) ‘Psychology’.

Photo: (L-R) Giulia Luzi (SALIS), Dr Ciarán Mac Murchaidh (Fiontar) and Cleo Harvey (School of Physical Sciences)