The Alison Dunlop Graduate Prize of the Society for Musicology in Ireland was inaugurated in 2017 in memory of the Irish musicologist Dr Alison Dunlop. It is awarded biennially by the SMI for a distinguished thesis on any musicological topic submitted within the two most recent academic years as part of a taught-course masters degree at an institution in the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland. The winning thesis is selected by a prize committee and submitted to the SMI Council for award at the annual SMI Postgraduate Conference.
The prize for 2023, presented on 12 January 2024 at the joint SMI/ICTM Postgraduate Conference hosted by Maynooth University, was awarded to Emma Arthur (University College Dublin) for her thesis Art Music and Music Education in Irish Convent Schools, 1830-1900: A Preliminary Survey and Interpretation of the Primary Sources, supervised by Professor Harry White. The jurors added a note of special commendation to one of the runners-up, Áine Cassidy (Technical University Dublin), for her thesis French Pageboys in Nineteenth Century Opera as Lesbian Representation, supervised by Dr Rachel Talbot.
The prize for 2021, presented on 15 January 2022 at the joint SMI/ICTM Postgraduate Conference (online) hosted by Dublin City University, was awarded to Chloe Byrne (University College Dublin) for her thesis White Racial Framing and the Status of Black Musical Representation in Third-Level Music Curricula in Ireland, supervised by Dr Wolfgang Marx.
The prize for 2019, presented on 18 January 2020 at the joint SMI/ICTM Postgraduate Conference at the University of Limerick, was awarded to Shauna Louise Caffrey (University College Cork) for her thesis ‘Come all ye songsters of the Sky’: Music and Magic in Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, supervised by Drs Tríona Ní Shíocháin and Melanie Marshall.
The 2017 awards, presented on 20 January 2018 at the Postgraduate Conference at Maynooth University, are as follows:
First prize: Cathal Twomey (MU; supervisor: Dr Estelle Murphy), Musico-Poetic Structures and Vocal Style in William Boyce’s Solomon
Second prize: Helen Gubbins (UCD; supervisor: Dr Jaime Jones), Encoding Authenticity in Radio Music: Renfro Valley Barn Dance and Kentucky Folk Music
 | Alison Dunlop (1985–2013) graduated from Queen's University Belfast with a BA in Modern Greek and Music (first class honours) and a MA in Music (distinction). She went on to complete a doctoral thesis at Queen’s on the composer Gottlieb Muffat (1690–1770) under the supervision of Professors Yo Tomita and Ian Woodfield. Dr Dunlop studied piano with Roy Holmes at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama and performed at venues throughout Ireland, including the National Gallery, Dublin and the Waterfront Hall, Belfast. A teaching assistant at Queen's University, she was joint co-ordinator there of the 14th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music. She published on various aspects of keyboard music and source studies and presented at academic gatherings in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. Dr Dunlop is author of The Life and Works of Gottlieb Muffat, 1690–1770 (Vienna: Hollitzer Wissenschaftsverlag, 2013). |