Four Scholars tell their stories

  • April 17, 2015
Four Scholars tell their stories

Four Gates Cambridge Scholars will share personal experiences of political extremism, poverty and vision loss as well as working with an NGO focusing on educating girls in India at an event next week.

Four Gates Cambridge Scholars will share personal experiences of political extremism, poverty and vision loss as well as working with an NGO focusing on educating girls in India at an event next week.

The Scholars Stories session takes place on Tuesday 21st April at 7pm. The Scholars taking part are:

Hanna Ajer [2014], who is doing an MPhil in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. She will talk about her experiences of growing up in a community where extremism was very present. She says: “During my childhood, my neigbourhood was home to one of the most infamous neo-nazi gangs Norway’s ever seen.”

Irene Falk [2014], who is doing a PhD in Clinical Neurosciences. She will reflect on a personal experience with vision loss and what she learned over the course of medical treatment about the development of the physician-patient relationship and the potential role of humanism and narrative in medicine from the perspective of both patient and trainee medical student .

Ananya Mishra [2014], who is doing an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies. Ananya will speak about her experiences of working with Voice4Girls, a Hyderabad-based NGO, as a camp counsellor and curriculum development assistant. The organisation trains adolescent girls from low-income schools in Andhra Pradesh and Uttarakhand in basic English and equips them with critical knowledge often ignored or considered a taboo in many families. Ananya says: “I’ll be sharing my experiences working on the ground as a counsellor, the limits and challenges that adolescent girls in India face on a day to day level and how this experience has helped me take the lead in the curriculum development work on the English language programme at Science Education Initiative India.”

Arif Naveed [2014], who is doing a PhD in Education. He will speak about his childhood in Pakistan, including his schooling and how experiencing and observing difficult situations of poverty and conflict inspired him to make a career in policy research and how it shaped the agenda of his research on education in Pakistan.

The session will take place in the Gates Cambridge Common Room. Scholars and their guests are welcome.

Picture: Voice4Girls.

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