Arts graduate Annalise Higgins has been awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to continue her studies at the University of Cambridge.
The Gates Cambridge Scholarships are extremely competitive, with Annalise going up against 3,370 international applicants for the 55 scholarships on offer in this round.
Annalise, who recently graduated with a Master of Arts in History, will be undertaking doctoral study in which she plans to consider the environmental context of international diplomacy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a particular focus on the ocean.
“I really want to try to come to terms with how the physical environment influenced diplomatic negotiations, despite diplomatic negotiations being formally sequestered within meeting halls and debating chambers,” she explains.
“As well as, for example, regulating their conduct within oceans by neutralising spaces, nations eventually started regulating their interactions with the environment itself.”
When asked how she was feeling about her success, she summed it up on one word: “surprised”.
“This was not quite how I saw studying History at university going when I started. My parents did not get the chance to go to university, so I had no clue what to expect. I don't think I even knew that postgraduate study was a real thing and I certainly never would have guessed I'd get to move overseas to study a project I defined on my own.”
“I chose History for my honours and masters because I appreciated the academic culture and because the aim of studying History seemed to be developing understanding. History lets people strike a logical balance between methodological rigour and flexibility, which means that one really has to think about what they are doing and why if they want to be a successful historian.”
Her supervisor, Associate Professor Maartje Abbenhuis, says that “it comes as no to surprise to me that Annalise won one of the most prestigious academic scholarships available.”
“The Gates Cambridge Scholarship not only recognises the intellectual capacity of the recipient but also their capacity for leadership and desire to improve the lives of others. Annalise is an extraordinary person: motivated, keenly insightful and with a heightened sense of right and wrong.”
“She will make a great historian, and we will be reading her scholarship for years to come.”
Annalise already has a journal article and a chapter in a collection that she edited alongside Maartje and Christopher Barber both due to be published this year.
“I might not have done honours if I hadn't stumbled into a Summer Research Scholarship with Maartje after finishing my last year of undergraduate study. The diplomatic strand of my intended research comes from working with Maartje, and the environmental strand has probably come a bit more from me. I can't really speak highly enough of everything Maartje has done for me.”
Annalise says that working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant was one of the best parts of studying in the Faculty of Arts: “It was the combination of getting to do my own research and getting to teach that made me decide I wanted to do a PhD.”
She received multiple scholarships during her time here, and acknowledged that she was “incredibly lucky” to be supported by a University of Auckland Masters/Honours/PGDip Scholarship at both honours and masters level.
The aim of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship programme is to build a global network of future leaders committed to improving the lives of others, and it is funded by a donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Once in Cambridge, Annalise will be working with Professor Alison Bashford, and studying at Trinity College.
Although it was not deliberate, Annalise says that it “seems fitting that I am off to the same college that Professor Jonathan Scott attended, given that his Texts and Contexts honours course was very influential and he helped a lot with PhD advice.”
“The staff in History are wonderful and unfailingly supportive of things like applying for PhDs.”
We profiled Annalise for the Faculty of Arts website when she was just getting started with her undergraduate study, and she reflects that “I actually think my first-year self was on to something with how she explained why an Arts degree mattered because it challenged you to think for yourself and form critical opinions.”
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