Aditi Malik, is between 80 students from 26 countries being awarded the prestigious Gates scholarship to study for a course at the University of Cambridge.
Malik is among those selected for Gates Cambridge Scholarships from a field of more than 7,252 applicants.
Malik did her undergraduate degree in Government and Economics at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, and was given the Henry S Williamson Award, the college’s most prestigious award for academic and extra-curricular achievement awarded to a member with the graduating class.
She will review for an MPhil in International Relations at Cambridge, focusing on the theoretical and practical tensions among state sovereignty and human rights, having a unique emphasis within the role of humanitarian intervention.
As an undergraduate, she conducted fieldwork in Cambodia around the Khmer Rouge genocide, worked with asylum seekers from the United States, and carried out investigation around the death penalty in India.
She says: “Through such experiences, my interest in genocide and international responses to issues of genocide and ethnic cleansing crystallized. My ultimate aim is usually to obtain a PhD and become a university professor in India, wherever I believe the academic community on human rights discourse needs for being strengthened.”