Congratulations to Dr. Deborah Hayden, who has been selected as one of just 36 academics across Ireland – in all fields of research – to receive an inaugural Irish Research Council Laureate Award. This prestigious and highly competitive grant scheme is the result of a €29.6 million investment by the Irish government in 'frontier research' projects spanning the life sciences, physical sciences and engineering, and the arts, humanities and social sciences.

Deborah's grant will allow her to hire research staff and conduct a two-year project on the history of medicine in medieval Ireland, focusing on a pair of Irish-language medical tracts preserved in manuscripts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Deborah teaches medieval Irish language, literature and history in the Department of Early Irish at Maynooth University in County Kildare, Ireland, where she was also recently awarded the 2018 Early Career Research Achievement Award in the Faculty of Arts, Celtic Studies and Philosophy.

Deborah graduated from Camden-Rockport High School with the Class of 1999. She is the daughter of Elizabeth and James Hayden, of Islesboro.