Nuacht

Professor Dáibhí Ó Cróinín presented the George Huxley Prize in Early Irish History to Andrew Ó Donnghaile (PhD) on 1.7.2021. The prize is for the best essay on the subject of Early Irish (Brehon) Law, using original Old Irish legal sources, by a student of History. Andrew received the prize for his study of 'An Overview of Inter-Territorial Law in Early Medieval Ireland', which was published in PERITIA 30 (2019) [2020] 197-214.

George Huxley was born in Leicester in 1932. After military service in the Royal Engineers he went up to Magdalen College, Oxford, & graduated in litterae Humaniores in 1955. He served as Assistant Director of the British School in Athens, and as a Visiting Professor at Harvard, and in 1962 he was appointed Professor of Greek in Queen's University Belfast. He directed excavations at the Minoan island colony of Kythera and, as well as publishing the results of those 1963 and 1965 projects, he has published on Achaeans and Hittites (1960), On Aristotle and Greek Society (1979), and Homer and the Travellers (1988). After leaving Queen's he began a long association with Trinity College Dublin. From 1986 to 1989 he was Director of the Gennadius Library in the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. He became an Irish citizen in 2019 and has for many years been a generous benefactor of Irish Studies (including Early Irish History and Celtic Studies) in Galway and elsewhere.