CATHERINE CORLESS, POET Thomas Kinsella and physicist Michal Lipson will be awarded honorary degrees at Trinity College today.

In April, Catherine Corless received a People of the Year award for her work in uncovering what happened to the Tuam babies. As a result of her research into the home, run by the Sisters of Bon Secours, the remains of hundreds of babies were discovered. 

TCD said: “She pursued this work in the face of many obstacles and without the support and infrastructure of an academic institution. Her work is recognised widely as being of special national and social importance, frequently referenced by the current Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Katherine Zappone TD.”

The awarding of an Honorary Doctorate by the University acknowledges the academic excellence and social importance of Catherine Corless’ work which also stands up for truth and reconciliation in this country.

Thomas Kinsella is widely recognised as a major twentieth-century Irish poet. TCD said: “What makes Kinsella truly exceptional is the contribution he has also made to the understanding of the Irish-language tradition, from his engagements with early Irish in The Táin through to the translations gathered in An Duanaire and, in the New Oxford Book of Irish Verse, his presentation of Ireland’s poetry from the beginning, in both languages, with all new translations, the poetry of a shared and painful history, and, in the words of the poet himself “of a dual tradition surviving the extinction of a language”.”

Michal Lipson is an American physicist known for her pioneering work in silicon photonics. She is currently the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor of Applied Physics at Columbia University.

Said Trinity: “She works at the interface between physics and electrical engineering and is renowned for enabling optics on a chip for processing and transmitting information with high capacity.”

This will be the final honorary degree ceremony for the Chancellor of the University, Mary Robinson who is stepping down this year as Chancellor. The conferring ceremony will begin at 3pm today.