Underwater archaeology student awarded Women Divers’ Hall of Fame scholarship

Analise Hollingshead, a graduate student in the Florida State University Department of Anthropology, part of the College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded the 2019 Women Divers’ Hall of Fame Cecelia Connelly Scholarship in Underwater Archaeology. 

WDHOF scholarships recognize and raise awareness of the contributions of the year’s notable women divers. The underwater archaeology award is on named in honor of 2001 inductee and former Gold Star diving instructor and Atlantic Alliance worker and supporter, Cecelia A. Connelly. 

Hollingshead’s scholarship will go toward covering costs associated with her research on a submerged prehistoric site located in the Aucilla River, which runs from Brooks County, Georgia, through the Big Bend Region of Florida and feeds into the Gulf of Mexico. Her investigation of the site could provide clues about the first Americans occupying Northwest Florida during the late Pleistocene through early Holocene epochs.

Hollingshead is the first current FSU student to win the award. Alumnae Amanda Evans received the award in 2005 and assistant professor of anthropology Jessi Halligan received it in 2010. 

WDHOF offers multiple scholarships a year at both the undergraduate and graduate level and has done so since 2002. 

“I feel honored that the Women Divers’ Hall of Fame chose me to receive this prestigious scholarship, especially after my adviser, Jessi Halligan, won this award nine years ago. It just goes to show hard work pays off,” Hollingshead said.