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Ailbhe Smyth receives UCC’s inaugural Athena Swan Trailblazer Award
Renowned academic, feminist and LGBT+ activist Ailbhe Smyth visited University College Cork this week to accept the University’s first Athena Swan Trailblazer Award.
The award was presented to Smyth by the Deputy President & Registrar, Professor Stephen Byrne, as part of the University’s celebration of its first Silver Athena Swan awards.
The UCC Athena Swan Trailblazer award celebrates pioneers and innovators dedicated to making Ireland a more inclusive and equal society. As a Silver Athena Swan University, UCC believes that that equality, diversity and inclusion strengthen higher education communities, and by extension, wider society. The new UCC Athena Swan Trailblazer award celebrates these values, and the role models in Irish society who embody them.
Following the presentation of the inaugural Trailblazer Award to Ailbhe Smyth, UCC’s EDI Director, Dr. Avril Hutch, highlighted some of Smyth’s signal contributions to Irish life. She described an extraordinary legacy, reflecting a lifetime’s work dedicated to public and community service, education, social justice, activism, and LGBT+ and women’s rights.
Smyth was the founding director of the Women’s Education, Research and Resource Centre (WERRC) and head of Women’s Studies at UCD (1990 – 2006). She was a co-director of the Together for Yes national referendum campaign on abortion, and spokeswoman and convener for the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment. She was also a founding member of Marriage Equality, convenor of Feminist Open Forum, an organiser for Action for Choice and a board member of Equality and Rights Alliance.
She chaired the National LGBT Federation for over 10 years and in 2015 she received the 'Lifetime Achievement' award at the GALAS, Ireland's LGBTQ Awards Ceremony.
In 2019, Ailbhe was named as one of the Time 100 most influential people alongside the other co-directors of Together for Yes, Grainne Griffin and Orla O'Connor, in recognition of their roles in the campaign to legalise abortion in Ireland. Ailbhe was twice nominated by the Minister for Education to serve on the board of the Higher Education Authority and has also served as a Trustee of the National Library of Ireland.
Ailbhe is Chair of Ballyfermot STAR Addiction Services, and of Women's Aid, and is a member of the board of Age Action.
In 2022, Smyth was awarded the freedom of the City of Dublin. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from NUI Galway in April 2022.
In February 2025, Smyth was presented with France’s highest honour, the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, by H.E. Ambassador of France Céline Place during a ceremony held at the Mansion House, in the presence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Emma Blain.
To mark the presentation of the inaugural UCC Athena Swan Trailblazer Award to Ailbhe Smyth, Deputy President & Registrar Professor Stephen Byrne presented Smyth with an artwork by Liudamila Kalinka entitled Interconnected.
In her keynote remarks, Smyth congratulated UCC on earning Silver Athena Swan accreditation, and reflected frankly and movingly on her own academic career. As a pioneering researcher and activist for equality for women in academia, Smyth is a foundational figure in the development of women’s studies in Irish higher education, and helped break ground for generations of women academics by advocating for fair treatment and an end to sex discrimination and sexual harassment in academic workplaces. Reflecting on her academic career, Smyth warmly recalled enduring friendships and long-term collaborations with UCC colleagues, in particular Professor Maire Mulcahy, Dr. Liz Steiner-Scott and Dr. Sandra McAvoy, among others.
Reflecting on US government attacks on institutional efforts to advance diversity, equality and inclusion, Smyth emphasised the importance for individuals and institutions to name these values aloud, and to claim them. Now is the time, she urged, to “consolidate, strengthen and expand” this work.
The presentation of the inaugural UCC Athena Swan Trailblazer award to Ailbhe Smyth took place as part of the celebration of UCC’s first Silver institutional Athena Swan awards, hosted by the Deputy President and Registrar in the Boole Library Creative Zone on April 8th 2025. The Silver institutional award to UCC was announced in March 2025, along with the first Silver School-level award, to the School of Food & Nutritional Sciences.