Trinity professor Sarah Alyn-Stacey named a Knight of France’s National Order of Merit

The National Order of Merit is the second national Order after the Legion of Honor

Associate Professor in French, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Sarah Alyn-Stacey, has been named a Knight of the National Order of Merit by French Ambassador to Ireland Jean-Pierre Thébault at a special ceremony that took place in Trinity.

Speaking at the ceremony, Alyn-Stacey said: “This is a great honour for me, for Trinity’s Department of French, the School of Languages, and the College generally. It comes as a timely reminder that the College’s core mission is teaching and research and its reputation is founded historically upon excellence in these.” She continued: “The College cherishes its long-standing historical links with France, as evidenced by its founding of the oldest chair in French in the world [in] 1776. We welcome the energy and dynamism of the French Embassy in Dublin and look forward to an ongoing, very fruitful, collaboration.”

The National Order of Merit is the second national Order after the Legion of Honor with membership awarded by the President of the French Republic. The Order rewards “distinguished merit”.

Professor Alyn-Stacey holds a first-class joint honors degree in French and Italian from the University of Hull in the UK and a PhD in French Renaissance literature. During her PhD, she was “Lectrice” at Université Paris IV-Sorbonne. Before taking up her lectureship in French Renaissance Literature at Trinity, she taught at the University at St Andrews and the University of Wales. She joined Trinity in 1996, first as a lecturer, then as an Associate Professor in 2006.

Her teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate research extends beyond the early modern period to poetry, film, contemporary French women’s writing, Franco-Irish links with reference to sport and World War Two.

Since 1999, she has been the Director of the Trinity Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies – organising workshops, running international research networks, research seminars, and a refereed publication series, “Court Cultures of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance”.

Professor Alyn-Stacey sits on the Board of Trinity, the standing Committee of Fellows, and the Grounds and Gardens Consultative Group of Trinity.

She is currently a member of the Editorial Board of H-France, an interdisciplinary digital journal recognised as the largest scholarly organisation for francophone history and culture. She has also served on the Executive Council of French Studies from 2000-2006 and sat on the Executive Council of Renaissance Studies for almost twenty years, as well as being Associate Editor of the Journal of Renaissance Studies between 1996 and 2006.

In recognition of her research and her contribution to the field of French Renaissance literature, she was elected to Membership of the Académie de Savoie in 2005. She supervises PhD students on early-modern thought and various Masters in Medieval Language, Literature and Culture.

Sarah Meehan

Sarah is a 2nd year German and Economics student.