Patrick Clancy Award

Postgraduate Award

The Patrick Clancy Award was established in 2007 by the College of Human Sciences to honour the deanship of Professor Patrick Clancy.  It is awarded to a full-time student who achieves lst Class Honours and the highest grade in the year in the Sociology Masters programme. 

The Award comprises a cheque for €1,000 and the Patrick Clancy Medal, the latter is presented at the President’s Award Ceremony each March.

Previous recipients:

• 2023    Michele D'errico    
• 2022    Chee Cheng Koay
• 2021    Eleftherious Koutsoumaris
• 2020    Dylan Caroll
• 2019    Ciara Feely
• 2018    Michael William Foley
• 2017    Monika da Silva Pedroso
• 2016    Miriam Vorrath 
• 2015    Arlen Spitalnik
• 2014    Roisin Brennan
• 2013    Mark Doyle
• 2012    Alison Hynes
• 2011    Maria Calvo Martin
• 2010    Yvonne O'Reilly
• 2009    Gemma Moore
• 2008    Emma Molloy
• 2007    Orla Keane

Mary Kelly Award

Postgraduate Award

The Mary Kelly Award was established in 2011 by the School of Sociology to honour the memory of Dr Mary Kelly. During her 34 year career at UCD Mary was an outstanding teacher, a distinguished researcher and a wonderful colleague. She published widely over several fields in sociology, initially in the area of media studies and in later years in environmental sociology. Her last book was Environmental Debates and the Public in Ireland (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2007).

While at UCD Mary developed the first taught masters programme in sociology in Ireland and was a dedicated supervisor of doctoral students. She served as Head of School from 1999 to 2003. She was a founding member of the Centre for Equality Studies at UCD. She had a strong interest in comparative research and was a prominent member of the Euromedia Group.

In recognition of her deep concern about the environment Mary’s colleagues in the School marked her contribution to UCD and to Irish Sociology by planting a tree in her memory and placed a bench beside it. The tree and bench are located behind the Newman Building in the Birch Walk which is part of the university’s Boundary Woodland Walk. 

The Mary Kelly Award comprises of a cheque for €500 and the Mary Kelly Medal to be awarded annually, over a ten year period, to the student with the best Masters dissertation in Sociology.  It is open to all Master's students in Sociology who have completed a 90 credit programme and who are not in receipt of a school prize. The medal is awarded at the President's Award Ceremony each March.

Previous recipients:

• 2023   Zachary Porter
• 2022   Yuwen Pan
• 2021   Lea Valance
• 2020   LIU Xingyao
• 2019   Tom Noonan
• 2018   Gerard Bracken 
• 2017   Michael Breslin
• 2016   Anthonia Muoneke
• 2015   Ryan Nolan   
• 2014   Grainne McKeever and Elaneva Kelly
• 2013   Paul Boland
• 2012   Seosamh Garrihy
• 2011   Tara McIntyre

Barry Foley Prize

Undergraduate Award

Barry Foley was an outstanding student of sociology who died unexpectedly on the 12th of March 2016. In the final semester of his degree progamme, Barry had already impressed staff and students alike with his creativity, imagination and intellectual daring qualities exhibited in his written assessments as well as in his oral contributions to classes and to discussions that overflowed classes into the corridors of UCD. Indeed, for his classmates, Barry was also an inspiration, a model student with an infectious passion for knowledge and learning and an example of how university students can be active citizens in the republic of letters that universities represent. As a result, the proposal to create a prize in his honour has been developed with a view to recognising and rewarding these qualities in current and future sociology students.

The prize is awarded on an annual basis at the end of the second semester to the sociology undergraduate student who, in the course of their ordinary assessment for sociology modules, produced the best essay-style written assignment as judged by a committee of members of the School of Sociology.

Any undergraduate student enrolled on a second or third year sociology module that involved the production of an essay-style written assignment for assessment and awarded a grade of A+, in any given academic year, automatically qualifies for consideration.

The final set of short-listed essays will then be read and examined by an Award Committee, comprising the Head of Teaching and Learning, and two other faculty members. The essay that shows, besides the highest standards of academic and scholarly competence, the greatest measure of daring, creativity, and imagination will be nominated for the prize. 

Previous recipients:

• 2021 Not awarded
  
  
• 2020 Adrasteia Hughes

Adrasteia Hughes's winning entry entitled 'Transgender Healthcare as a Human Right' from the module SOC20340 Sociology of Human Rights

• 2019 Kristen Bell

Kristen Bell's winning essay entitled 'The Invisible Panopticon: Socialization as a Mechanism of Gendered Social Control' from the module SOC30390 Punishment & Social Control.

• 2018 Sarah Fahy

Sarah Fahy's winning essay entitled 'A Conversation Between Mother Nature and Father Time'‌ from the module SOC30330 Contemporary Theory.

• 2017 Ciaran Burns

Ciaran Burns winning essay entitled 'The Social World A Play/Acts on Nature'  from the module SOC30330 Contemporary Theory.

• 2016  Paul O' Connor

Paul O' Connors winning essay entitled 'Labelling Theory, Deviance and Drink-driving In Ireland' from the module SOC30090 Crime and Society.