Dr Rubaiya Murshed has been named as the winner of the first Dr Arif Naveed Education Prize, honouring the late Gates Cambridge Scholar
I can feel Arif's legacy and that he is still giving me a boost of confidence. He continues to inspire me.
Dr Rubaiya Murshed
The first Dr Arif Naveed Education Prize, honouring the work and legacy of Gates Cambridge Scholar Arif Naveed, has been awarded to a researcher and columnist from Bangladesh.
The £1K Prize is awarded to a current or past outstanding Master’s or doctorate student at the University of Cambridge and is based on outstanding performance and the quality of an article published in an international peer-reviewed journal focusing on issues related to education, social justice and equality in a South Asian context.
Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the REAL Centre at the Faculty of Education, said the Prize recognises Arif’s friendship and scholarship. She read tributes from donors to the Prize fund who said it was a wonderful way to keep his memory alive and that his passing in 2024 had been “deeply felt” within the education community. One donor said the prize would enable others in the same field “to further the brilliant and important work that Arif was doing”.
Professor Rose said the bar had been set very high for the prize in recognition of the high bar Arif [2014] himself had set.
Professor Madeleine Arnot, Emerita Professor in Sociology of Education and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and one of Arif’s two PhD supervisors, spoke about his achievements, his mentorship of others and what he stood for. She said he had accomplished a lot in his 42 years and set an agenda that others could follow. He had wanted his research to make a difference, she said, and to provide evidence that could be used to create a more just world.
She spoke about Arif’s background, growing up in a rural village in south Punjab, and how he had seen many of his friends be unable to progress simply because they were poor. She spoke about his work on curriculum reform and widening access, his work to measure the geography of poverty, his interest in the multidimensional nature of the unequal distribution of resources and his belief that policy to address poverty had to fit the context of particular societies.
Professor Arnot also spoke of Arif’s qualitative research based on the importance of listening to and foregrounding the voices of the poor and understanding the dynamics at play in families and society. His work in this area is being published later this year in a book put together posthumously by his colleagues.
There were four finalists for the prize, including Gates Cambridge Scholar Ali Ansari [2018]. The winner was announced by Professor Kamal Munir, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for University Community and Engagement and Professor of Strategy and Policy at a ceremony organised by the REAL Centre and held at the Faculty of Education on Wednesday.
She is Dr Rubaiya Murshed from Bangladesh, a lecturer at the University of Dhaka and a newspaper columnist whose work addresses the most marginalised by the education system, including street children.
Rubaiya said Arif, who won the Bill Gates Sr. Prize in 2018, was like a big brother to her. She met him when she was doing her MPhil at Cambridge and he was doing his PhD. He was already known in the Faculty of Education for his dedication to his work, she said, and proved an inspiration to her.
The last time she saw him was in Bath [Arif was a senior lecturer at the University of Bath at the time of his death] when she was finishing her PhD. He encouraged her to continue with her work and said he couldn’t wait to see what she would do next. “I can feel his legacy and that he is still giving me a boost of confidence,” she said. “He continues to inspire me.”
*The deadline for applications for the second Arif Naveed Prize is 29th January 2027. More information here.
