Trinity Hub awards €18K to four new research projects

Trinity College Dublin’s Trinity Long Room Hub has awarded over €18,000 to four new projects through its Research Incentive Scheme (RIS), as announced on 30 March 2026.

The RIS provides seed funding to researchers at a critical stage in their proposal development. Many past awardees have subsequently secured larger grants. The scheme is open to academic and research staff within the Hub’s partner Schools and the Library.

This year’s funded projects come from Trinity’s School of Histories and Humanities, the School of Creative Arts, and the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies. Topics range from connections between African American and Northern Irish civil rights movements to a systematic evaluation of University of Sanctuary supports in Ireland.

List of awardees and their projects

Katja Bruisch (School of Histories and Humanities)
Siberian gas on the world’s dinner tables: A global history of Soviet and Russian fertilisers
Amid price volatility in international fertiliser markets following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, this project rewrites the global environmental history of the late Cold War through Soviet and Russian fossil‑fuel‑based synthetic fertilisers and their global circulation, revisiting the USSR and Russia’s place in the world economy while contributing to the historicisation of the planetary crisis.

Stefanie Van de Peer (School of Creative Arts)
Feminist witness seminar: An intersectional approach to film heritage
This project develops a transparent, intersectional oral history methodology for film preservation. It asks how individual women’s legacies can become part of shared global film heritage, focusing on undocumented careers of Global South women. By facilitating memory work and mobilising new audiences, it reshapes film historiography through feminist and anti‑colonial practices.

Rachel Hoare (School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies)
Navigating sanctuary: Creative arts methodologies and digital solutions for forcibly displaced students in Irish higher education
Ninety Gazan students were evacuated to Irish higher education institutions in 2024‑2025, with more expected in 2026. They face unfamiliar cultural and academic systems while carrying profound trauma. This two‑phase project develops trauma‑informed creative methodologies to evaluate sanctuary‑seeking students’ experiences and inform technology‑enhanced solutions. It is the first systematic evaluation of University of Sanctuary supports in Ireland.

Daniel Geary (School of Histories and Humanities)
We shall overcome: Northern Ireland, the U.S., and the long civil rights movements
The African American civil rights movement inspired Northern Ireland’s movement, which borrowed iconography, music, tactics, and its name. This identification reverberated across the Atlantic and drew complex responses. The project explores why this identification occurred, its consequences, its roots in longer “black and green” histories, and its legacy today, drawing on multiple experts in a collaborative fashion.