Inistioge student is awarded one of world’s leading scholarships
AN INISTIOGE postgraduate student has made history at Waterford Institute of Technology ( WIT), having been honoured with one of the world’s greatest scholarships, a Fulbright scholarship to go study in America.
Dayna Killian, a research postgraduate student at WIT is one of 38 people across Europe who has been selected for a Fulbright Award to study in America. The WIT School of Humanities researcher is WIT’s first research postgraduate student to get the scholarship.
Minister Charlie Flanagan of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Mr Reece Smyth, Chargé d’affaires of the US Embassy in Ireland, announced the new Fulbright Irish Awardees at Iveagh House last week. Theatre studies lecturer at WIT, Dr Úna Kealy, is Dayna’s supervisor and encouraged her to apply for the Fulbright scholarship.
Recipients include students, academics and professionals from 15 HEIs across Ireland and Europe. These awardees will go to top US institutions to study and collaborate with experts in their field.
A recipient of WIT’s PhD Scholarship, programme Dayna is currently a PhD candidate for the ‘Performing Women: Performing the Region’ project at WIT. This doctorate seeks to recoup the work of women playwrights who wrote for the Abbey Theatre during the first 50 years of the 20th century and to contribute to the development of gender equality policy for the future of the Irish theatre sector, a demand highlighted most recently and vigorously by the Waking the Feminists movement.
Dayna attended the Holy Faith, New Ross and Newtown, Waterford secondary schools. She said: ‘I have been extremely lucky throughout my education to have the unwavering support of many people including Dr Niamh Malone who has been a guiding light since my early teenage years through to the present day, as well as the supervisory support of Dr Una Kealy my lead supervisor in WIT. My parents Michael and Margaret, sisters Megan and Isabel and wider family including my nanny Joan Killian and aunties Olivia, Bernie, Catherine and Veronica have been of invaluable support in every way and for all the time and effort such a wide range of talented, expert and loving people have invested in me, I feel extremely grateful and humbled.’
This prestigious award will enable Dayna to travel to the US to work with Professor Susan Cannon-Harris at Notre Dame University in order to further explore the representation of women playwrights and Irish womanhood on the Abbey stage in the first half of the 20th century. ‘ Travelling to Notre Dame in Indiana this September as a Fulbright student offers me a life-changing opportunity which will offer me an opportunity to disseminate my current work on women playwrights and my work around gender policy development in the cultural sector in Ireland. I am very grateful to the Fulbright Commission for this opportunity and for all the encouragement I have received in both my professional and personal life.’
Before starting out as a researcher at WIT, Dayna completed her MSc at WIT in Global Financial Information Systems. Prior to this her educational achievements included a first class honours degree in Drama and Theatre studies at Liverpool Hope University.
WIT has a long history of engagement with the Fulbright initiative with four staff travelling to the US as Fulbright Scholars and welcoming three US academics to the Institute over the past four years. Dr Peter McLoughlin, Vice President for Research at WIT said that the Institute is delighted that Dayna Killian has become the institute’s first research postgraduate student to receive a prestigious Fulbright scholarship. Mr McLoughlin said: ‘Dayna has excelled in her research to date having reached the final of the HEA/Irish Independent Making an Impact competition last year. WIT would like to thank the Fulbright Commission for its continued support and we wish Dayna well in her studies in the US.’