Sophia Moore '26, Traveled to Ireland“My name is Sophia Moore, and I’m a senior English Education major graduating in Fall 2026! This past July, I went on a two-week trip to Ireland as part of the Geraldine Trammell Hurley Fellowship. While there, I visited landscapes, historic sites, and museums associated with the ancient Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge to research the epic’s enduring importance. I got to hike the Cooley Mountains, enter ancient portal tombs, explore dozens of castles, and visit the stunning seat of the ancient kings of Ireland, all while experiencing the beautiful culture of local Irish people! It was an incredible experience I will never forget!
My travels in Ireland were not only thrilling, but also immensely relevant to my career goals! My experiences on my trip gave me a much deeper, place-based, culturally informed understanding of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, and I plan to use this understanding to develop an ecologically-focused English curriculum about the epic in my upcoming senior capstone project. Overall, I had an amazing time and learned so much on my trip! I am extremely grateful that the Fellowship enabled me to go, and I would recommend that any interested English major applies for it!”
Gwen Pregnall '25, Traveled to Portugal & Spain“My name is Gwen Pregnall, and I graduated in 2025 with a BA in English and Spanish with a minor in creative writing. I went on a week-long trip over spring break to Portugal and Spain in March of 2025. This trip really brought together all of my interests while at Winthrop. During the semester of the trip, I was working on my honors thesis: a translation of two short stories from Spanish to English. While the author I translated, Brenda Lozano, is from Mexico, I was able to purchase some of her books in Spanish that would have been difficult to get otherwise! Also, I got to experience the Spanish language in a way I never had been able to before. Even though I was only there for a short time, my conversations and interactions while in Spain gave me the confidence boost I needed to finish those translations. I even got to take a picture with the portrait of a Spanish writer I admire, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer! If you're thinking of applying for the Hurley Fellowship, please, please do. It’s a trip I'll always remember.”
