Ruth Negga and Rhiannon Giddens awarded honorary doctorates from University of Limerick

Limerick actress Ruth Negga, and two-time Grammy award winning American folk musician Rhiannon Giddens have been awarded honorary doctorates from University of Limerick (UL).

The artists were awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by Chancellor Professor Brigid Laffan, at a ceremony in UL's Irish World Academy of Music and Dance.

"This is my family's home town so I felt very humbled by the honour," Negga told RTÉ.

"What I do with American music and the stories that I tell, there's a lot of echo, there's a lot of rhythm and rhyme with the story of Ireland, so it feels really incredible to make those connections with students who come here to learn the Irish story," said Giddens.

Negga, known for her performances in films like Warcraft (2016), Ad Astra (2019), and Good Grief (2023), studied acting at Trinity College Dublin before she had her breakthrough in Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto in 2005. Six years later, she took on a role of Rosie in RTÉ’s crime drama TV show Love/Hate.

She gained international recognition for her portrayal of Mildred Loving in Jeff Nichols' historical drama Loving, earning nominations for the Academy Award Best Actress and the BAFTA Rising Star Award. In 2022, she was also nominated for a Tony Award for her Broadway debut in Macbeth.

Born in North Carolina, now living in Limerick, Giddens is a two-time Grammy award-winning singer, multi-instrumentalist, and composer of opera, ballet and film. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her opera Omar, co-written with Michael Abels in 2023. For the past four years, she has served as artist-in-residence at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, and the Artistic Director of the musical collective Silkroad Ensemble.

In 2024, she made headlines by playing banjo on Beyoncé’s country hit 'Texas Hold 'Em' from the album Cowboy Carter.