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Kirkpatrick Award

The Kirkpatrick History of Medicine Award encourages engagement with the history of medicine in Ireland.

The Kirkpatrick History of Medicine Award will not be taking place in 2026.

For further updates, please check back here at a later date, or subscribe to the Heritage Centre newsletter.

Last year's winners

You can read about last year's winners and their work on our blog. Dr Caitlín Smith's piece, "Cut off in the prime of their usefulness and activity": maternal mortality rates in Belfast during the first half of the twentieth century, can be read here. You can read Mr Kevin Finnan's piece, Identifying doctors who treated volunteers during the War of Independence, here.

Who was Dr Kirkpatrick?

Physician and historian Thomas Percy Claude Kirkpatrick (1869-1954), was Registrar of this College for over forty years from 1910 to his death in 1954. He devoted his considerable energies to preserving and developing the College’s library and heritage collections, and much of the strength of today's collections are as a result of his dedication. Kirkpatrick published numerous works on the history of medicine in Ireland and bequeathed his library and archives to the College.

Previous Winners

No award in 2026

2025 - Kevin Finnan Identifying the doctors who treated volunteers during the War of Independence", and Caitlín Smith "Cut off in the prime of their usefulness and actvity": maternal mortality rates in Belfast during the first half of the twentieth century.

No award beween 2023 and 2024

2022 - Bridget Keown "In the midst of the trouble area during rebellion" Gender and truama on the homefront of the Easter Rising.

No award beween 2019 and 2021

2018 - Triona Waters Remedying the ‘"growing evil": the curable and incurable patients of the Limerick District Lunatic Asylum, 1827-1887.

2017 - David Kilgannon '"Something for the mental defectives of the West": Establishing a centre for the intellectually disabled at Bahola, Co. Mayo.

2016 - Stephen Bance Polio in Ireland. Rehabilitation and re-intergration in the mid-twentieth century.

2015 - Robyn Atcheson The Irish poor law and medical relief for the poor in Belfast in the 1840s.

2014 - Aisling Veale "A class of her own" Negotiating religious and medical identities in Ireland and on the Missions, 1945-1960.

2013 - Dr Clara Cullen War work on the Home Front: The central Sphagnum Moss Depot of Ireland at the Royal College of Science for Ireland 1915-19.

2012 - Dr Anne Mac Lellan Victim or Vector? Tubercular Irish Nurses in England 1930-1960.

2011 - David Durnin War and Medicine: Irish Medical Involvement in the First World War.