The competition was judged by UCD’s Margaret Kelleher, UCD’s Karlin Lillington and Anne Mulvihill, the sister of Mary Mulvihill.
Cian Morgan, a medical student studying at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) is the 2026 winner of the Mary Mulvihill Award, the science media competition for third-level students that commemorates the late science journalist and author Mary Mulvihill. This year’s theme was on the subject of time and how it is an aspect of our existence that, while difficult to define, deeply pervades our lives and experiences.
Morgan received the award and a cash prize of €2,000 at a ceremony held at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, while TCD physics student Aoibheann Kearins and Ciaran Lynch, who is studying for a BA in Music and Film at University College Dublin, were highly commended and each received a cash prize of €500.
Morgan’s entry, ‘The Cows of Carlow: A Conversation with My Grandad’, is an essay inspired by his own and his grandfather’s personal and historical reflections on the topic.
He wrote about Dublin Mean Time, which is Ireland’s national standard time, established in 1880 and was 25 minutes and 21 seconds behind Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). He also wrote of the Time Ball on the roof of the Ballast Office at Aston Quay, Dublin, which was dropped down a pole every day at precisely 1.00pm, to allow sailors on the Liffey to calibrate their marine chronometers.
Morgan said, “Meanwhile in Tullow, my great-great-grandfather’s hometown in Co Carlow, there was no such sophisticated community timepiece. And so possession of a personal timepiece conferred considerable social status. Yet most people ordered their day around a much looser conception of time, far removed from our current anxious preoccupation with minutes and seconds and even the cows seemed to know what was the ‘right time’.”
Commenting on the essay, judge and UCD professor of Anglo-Irish literature and drama, Margaret Kelleher said, “I really liked it and found it really informative. Cian’s entry has many of the fine qualities of Mary’s work: it conveys substantial information in a way that is very accessible and engaging and is very well researched.”
Kearins is the second person in her family to feature among the prize winners, as her sister Aoife, a TCD graduate also received the highly commended award in 2020 and is now pursuing a PhD on the history of mathematics at the University of Oxford.
Aoibheann’s piece called ‘Time for you, Time for me’, explores her personal experiences of time over the course of her life, as well as the scientific and philosophical conceptions of time, covering Aristotle’s idea of potentiality and Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, which “shows that time is not universal”.
Lynch’s entry, ‘Timeless’, is an original musical composition, divided into three parts, with iterations and motifs to represent the past, the present and the future. The main melody is played on a grand piano, but Lynch also employs a wide range of percussion instruments to mark time and to introduce dramatic new possibilities to the piece.
“The theme for this year’s award was ‘Time’, an appropriate topic given that the award is marking ten years and the Award’s committee is wondering where time goes,” said Anne Mulvihill, Mary’s sister and a member of the judging panel.
She added, “It was also appropriate given that in many ways Mary was ahead of her time, pioneering science communication. Once again the judges were impressed and delighted with the wide range of entries on the subject and the winning entries strongly indicate that her legacy has lasted over time.”
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