PhD Student Amy Connolly Receives Travel Award to Present at Archaeology Conference

In January, PhD student Amy Connolly won the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA) Ed and Judy Jelks Student Travel Award to support her travel to the 2026 SHA conference in Detroit, Michigan. 

At the Detroit conference, she participated in a session called "Storied Landscapes: Co-Producing Meaningful Knowledge about Pasts, Presents, and Futures." Her research presentation, titled "'And bless each door that opens wide to stranger as to kin': Persistence on two Irish Islands", explored how descendant communities of two abandoned Irish Islands—Inis Oírc and Inis Bearachain—sustain ongoing and meaningful relationships to ancestral places through return journeys to the islands. In her words, "Drawing on archaeological fieldwork and oral histories with former residents and descendants, I examine how objects left behind by former residents continue to anchor familial and spiritual ties. These return visits reflect enduring connections to place and work to challenge conventional narratives of abandonment. By tracing the material and oral histories of these homes, I situate the islands within a broader landscape of movement where objects and return visits serve as markers of continuity. Rather than sites of abandonment, these islands persist and are continually shaped by those who return, remember, and reconnect."

At the conference, she also participated in an archaeological illustration workshop, supporting her interest in combining archaeological and artistic media.