Directory

Since completing my PhD in Classics in 2011, I have moved between Dublin and London and worked on a number of different projects. I am currently training to be a Classics teacher at King's College, London.

I grew up in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia. I have always been passionate for the wildlife and palaeontology. Despite living in one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, my contact with the nature was limited, and considering that Palaeontology was poorly developed in Colombia, I decided to study Civil Engineering. However, I never lost my passion for science, preferring to read about evolution and fossils than about engineering. After some elective courses, and encouraged by a professor of Biology, I followed my heart and started my Biology career at Universidad de los Andes. At the end of my undergrad, I got the chance to do an internship in Montana, with the University of Washington. Thanks to the scientists I met during my internship, I was able to contact Dr. Edwin Cadena, who helped me to realize that there are tons of fossils in Colombia to study. He also hired me as a research assistant and accepted me as his MSc. Student, at Universidad del Rosario. Now, as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, I´ll be able to pursue my PhD. in Zoology, where by using fossils and molecular data I want to study the tempo and mode of the diversification of colubroid snakes in the Neotropics.

Previous Education

Universidad del Rosario Palaeontology 2022
Universidad de Los Andes Biology 2018
Universidad de Los Andes Engineering 2017

I became passionate about cultural displacement among African immigrants while an undergraduate in Computer Science at the University of Missouri. I subsequently moved to New York where I created cultural programming for the African Diaspora while working as a technologist. I decided then to pursue full-time this passion to serve the culturally displaced, and I enrolled in a Master’s in African Studies at Yale. There, I researched Nigerian immigrant identity in New York, Tokyo and Mumbai under the tutelage of renowned Sociologist, Dr. Elijah Anderson. I seek to build upon this work through my PhD at Cambridge, where I will continue to investigate the assimilation trajectories of second-generation Nigerian immigrants, one of the most educated immigrant groups in the US and UK. My research will measure how their cultural identification patterns influence their assimilation into their host societies and/or Nigeria, particularly through the creation of Black cultural capital. With this research, I hope to ultimately leverage the the talents of the highly-educated, resource-rich Diaspora to help increase access to innovative technical and creative education in Nigeria, particularly for the girl child, who is much less likely to receive an education than her male counterpart.

Previous Education

Yale University African Studies (Sociology) 2019
University of Missouri System Computer Science 2004

I am undertaking an MMus in Choral Studies, having completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia. As a choral musician, I have been fortunate to have been heavily involved with Gondwana Choirs, Australia’s national choral organization for young people. I have also worked with the acclaimed Sydney Children’s Choir. At Cambridge, I hope to combine my academic interests in choral music with the practical conducting training. The opportunity to observe different choral musicians at work will provide essential experience to fulfill my aspiration to work as a professional conductor. I am passionate about increasing access to music education and performance opportunities for young people regardless of their physical location or socio-economic circumstance. I am keen to support musical outreach projects with an awareness of historical precedent and rigorous research processes.

Originally from California, I have been lucky enough to spend the last three years in Barbados studying physical activity and health disparities. I originally came to the Caribbean as a Fulbright Fellow, and was later affiliated with the University of the West Indies, Cavehill. The government of Barbados has recently passed a sugar-sweetened beverage tax and I am excited to focus my PhD with the MRC Epidemiology Unit on a multi-faceted evaluation of this tax. As so many countries around the world face growing concerns around obesity, diabetes and other related conditions, it is important for us to understand which policy tools are effective at addressing these issues at a population level. Before coming to Barbados, I was a Post Bachelor Fellow at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation and focused on the Global Burden of Disease and social determinants of health. I received my MPH from the University of Washington, and have a BA in Economics and Development Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. It is an incredible honor to join the Gates Cambridge community, and I am looking forward to being part of and contributing to such a diverse and committed group of scholars.

Previous Education

University of Washington
University of California, Berkeley

I have always been interested in the areas of the law that regulate scientific development with a focus on commercialisation of technology. The MPhil in BioScience Enterprise explores the business aspects of scientific development and innovation. Through this study, I gained a better understanding of the commercial, scientific and legal dimensions of scientific development and innovation.

Confronting issues that affect women and girls have always been a major part of my development process. Growing up in a small coastal town in Ghana, West Africa, I noticed that girls and boys are treated unequally, and women and men are held to different expectations. So, I chose to focus on gender issues at each stage of my education. At the University of Ghana, where I earned my bachelor's degree, my interests centred on the low participation of women in Ghanaian politics. During my master's, I researched the issue of African women's hair-culture and politics. My work introduced a third stance to the hair debate by arguing that African women do not alter their hair because they want to be white or just as a matter of style. Rather, there are norms in African culture that privilege straight hair over coily hair. At the University of Cambridge's Centre for Gender Studies, I will be looking at how Ewe and Akan cultural norms contribute to gender inequality and technology's impact on gender relations in Ghana. My goal is to produce research work that redefines gender relations, as well as strengthen gender-equality activism in Ghana and beyond. Joining the Gates Cambridge Scholars' community is a dream come true.

Previous Education

Bowling Green State University American Culture Studies 2020
University of Ghana Political Science 2014

As a scholar of Lebanese origin, born and raised in the diaspora, I have always grappled with the historical processes underlying such displacement, with its multidimensional precarity at home and abroad. My family, like countless others, has suffered tremendously at the hands of a civil war that tore my country apart for 15 years, and left scars persisting into the present. Indeed, the past year and a half have seen the violent eruption of the structural contradictions emerging from this conflict and those which facilitated its emergence in the first place, leading to the contemporary collapse in Lebanon's economy and governance structures alongside the explosion of the Beirut port - the lifeline and microcosm of a country dependent on imported goods, incomes, and capital for its livelihood. Accordingly, I hope to devote myself to understanding the complex origins of these deep-rooted issues, that I may contribute to improving living conditions in my home country. I believe that a critical understanding of the past ought to illuminate genuine paths to reform in the coming time. In other words, Sisyphus' happiness is inseparable from the curse which condemned him to his boulder and the trickery which provoked the wrath of Zeus.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Development Studies 2020
University of Toronto Economics & Philosophy 2019

Graduated from University of Lagos in 2007 with BSc honours in Chemical Engineering, I intend to explore the field more by specializing in the area of efficient provision of sustainable energy. My career goal is to hold a PhD in Chemical Engineering, have some industrial experiences and share the knowlegde by engaging in research and teaching either in the academic or research institutes. Also, I hope to be a major pioneer of great manufacturing and consultancy outlets in the future. It is a privilege being in the Gates Cambridge community, it will be a nice stepping stone to making my dreams come true. Thanks to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

My PhD research is about contemporary migration within Southeast Asia – my particular focus is on the migration of Filipino medical workers to Singapore. Through the lives of mobile medical workers, I will explore the globalisation of medical care and its ethical, political and cultural implications. I have just returned to Cambridge after a year of ethnographic fieldwork and I look forward to working with a diverse and dynamic graduate community in the year ahead.

I came to anthropology through an interest in narrative, and a desire to rethink my engagement with fiction, life writing, reportage, and research – writing forms that I have been moving between since I was an undergraduate. As a journalist and a university teacher, I often found myself returning to read ethnographies, with their focus on producing work that centred our different subjectivities, and grappling with the ethical and conceptual challenges of navigating these. So far, my research has been concerned with the political lives of Indian students, what Indian higher educational spaces engender, and who they exclude. For my PhD, I hope to trace how young people from ‘Northeast’ India navigate the moral and affective aspects of their ‘becoming’ when they travel to ‘mainland’ Indian cities to study. Given the region’s history of state repression, ethnic tensions, and the racialised tendency of many Indians to homogenise their identities, I am interested in foregrounding friendship, intimacy, and aspiration, to understand how these young students relate to each other from across their social subjectivities and ethnic and class locations. I’m excited and humbled to be part of the Gates Cambridge community, and to continue to be challenged by and learn from my peers.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Social Anthropology 2022
School of Oriental & African Studies (University o Gender Studies 2018
St. Joseph's College, BU English, Journalism,Psychology 2017

Growing up in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, I started playing ice hockey when I was five years old. Years later, I was able to experience my dream of playing hockey at the collegiate level through an athletic scholarship at the University of Lethbridge (UL) where I studied physics. Throughout my undergraduate and MSc degrees at the UL, I have been a part of the Astronomical Instrumentation Group developing innovative instrumentation to explore the formation and evolution of stars and galaxies. Now I will pursue a PhD in the Cambridge Astrophysics Group developing instrumentation for the detection of extrasolar planets. Recent advancements in technology will allow astronomers to spectroscopically measure variations in the orbits of sun-like stars induced by Earth-like planets, the next major advancement in the search for potentially habitable planets, and the subject of my PhD project. Alongside my studies, I am actively involved with the community of Lethbridge. Most recently, I have been volunteering with the Big Brothers and Big Sisters organization where I mentor a young individual who needs a consistent and supportive developmental relationship. Seeing them grow up and gain confidence has been my most rewarding experience.

Previous Education

University of Lethbridge Physics 2022
University of Lethbridge Physics 2020

My research investigates the ways in which implicit game theories, such as zero-sum mindset, underpin political polarization and intergroup hostility, inhibit trust and cooperation, and erode democratic and economic flourishing. This research is currently supervised by Dr. David Good and is supported by The ESRC project “Rebuilding Macroeconomics: Social Macroeconomics” in collaboration with Sir Paul Collier and Professor Dennis Snower. This work is also being applied in my capacity as a guest expert for BRIDGE (Building resilience to reduce polarisation and growing extremism) project for EFUS (European Forum for Urban Security) and for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).

My interest in how psychological processes can shape real-world realities first emerged from my background in journalism and media. This short career afforded me invaluable opportunities to work with organizations like CNN, TIME Inc., and Room to Read, and in countries across the globe. This career also impressed upon me the power of subjective interpretations and narratives to shape motivations and behaviors that shape our society. Before coming to Cambridge I studied social psychology as a post-baccalaureate scholar at UC Berkeley in the Emotion and Emotion Regulation Laboratory directed by Professor Iris Mauss and Professor Oliver John. Outside of academia, I am a certified conflict mediator in San Francisco, mediating disputes between police officers and citizens through the Department of Police Accountability.

Previous Education

University Of Georgia
University of Oxford
University of California, Berkeley