AWARDS 2016

STUDENTS

For its eighth campaign of allocation, the trustees have decided to allocate part of the money raised since the first Sciences Po Alumni UK Gala Dinner to fund two awards :

The Excellency Award Assia de Juniac worth £15,000.
The Merit Award Roger Seydoux worth £8,000.

These awards aim to contribute towards the cost of tuition fees during the second year of the double master Sciences Po/LSE which is spent in London. The allocation of the awards amongst those applicants is means tested.

"I am a dual American-Australian citizen born in Perth, Australia. Growing up, my family moved to Hong Kong, Singapore, Miami and Chicago. Having such an international childhood with exposure to many cultures and languages convinced me of a future path in international relations.

At Columbia University in New York, I studied political science and international relations, focusing on political economy and working as a research assistant on projects with the World Bank, UNCTAD and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment. I speak English, Portuguese, Spanish and French. I was fortunate to be able to spend 6 months studying in Rio de Janeiro on a David L Boren Scholarship, where I interned with the BRICS Policy Center and studied emerging economies.

After graduating from Columbia, I moved to London to work on litigation-arbitration at an international law firm, putting my Portuguese language skills to use on a Brazilian energy case. I have always been interested in pursuing a career in international development, but my time working in London opened my eyes to the role of the private sector in development and the scope for public-private partnerships.

I returned to the US and worked as a consultant in financial technology, managing a large security project while also developing a diversity and inclusion program and a Women in Technology initiative. This was an excellent opportunity to gain experience in creating social impact within the private sector.

I was fortunate to be awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to support my first year at Sciences Po, where I am studying International Public Management and working on my French. I am very grateful to the Sciences Po UK Alumni Trust for supporting my studies next year at LSE, and am thrilled to continue studying international affairs and political economy before returning to the professional world."

"I have been interested since a young age how economics and politics explain and address issues such as social injustice and ecological challenges. During my studies at the Europe-Africa programme of Sciences Po, I experienced a rich intellectual development; alongside the classroom, I volunteered for several organisations supporting destitute people in Paris, London and Hamburg in Germany; drawing comparisons between different national and organisational practices.

As part of my Bachelor’s degree, I was responsible in Uganda for advocacy projects within a pioneer African organisation for palliative care that brought me to visit both dying cancer patients at their homes in remote rural areas and Ministries of Health and international donors’ offices. Being a student or intern is, for me, a time of development of knowledge and skills, as well as of values, on which I shall rely in my career.

I speak French, English, German and Arabic, which I learned in Morocco and in Jordan. Passionate about African countries, the Middle East and the development of the European Union, I want to specialise in international economic policy and political economy to work in the fields of international development and cooperation, to facilitate positive changes on societies."

The Excellency Award Assia de Juniac

awarded to Laura Fisher

The Merit Award Roger Seydoux

awarded to Timothe Vulin

Lea Müller-Funk is currently a post-doctoral Research Associate in Political Science at the Centre de recherches internationales (CERI), Sciences Po.

Her core research interests include migration, transnational politics and media in the contemporary Arab world. Lea’s interdisciplinary PhD thesis (summa cum laude) dealt with Egyptian migrant activism in Paris and Vienna during and after the Arab Uprisings and was written in the framework of a Cotutelle agreement between Sciences Po and Vienna University. It combined a micro-level analysis on activists’ practices and attitudes with a macro-level analysis on governance. Thus, Lea is broadly interested in the role migrants can play as political actors in their countries of origin and the ways migration policies influence migrants’ individual behaviour.

Between 2011 and 2015, Lea was employed as a PhD Researcher and University Assistant at the Institute for Near Eastern Studies at Vienna University. From 2010 to 2011, she was a trainee at the Department of the European Council and the Council of the European Union at the Austrian Foreign Ministry. Before her PhD, Lea attended Vienna University (BA in Political Science, Magister in Arabic and Islamic Studies), the Institut National des Langues et Cultures Orientales (Erasmus exchange), and Sciences Po Paris (MA in Comparative Politics / Middle East and Muslim World). She held research affiliations to the American University Beirut (2009) and the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (2012).

As a post-doc in Oxford, Lea plans to publish her PhD and start a new research project on Syrian refugees. This project will focus on how Europe is imagined by Syrian refugees settling in Syria’s neighbouring countries and will examine how refugees’ imaginations and experiences in transit countries affect their attitudes to seek asylum in European countries. The project follows a mixed-method approach and will combine a focus on individuals’ experiences with a focus on governance.

RESEARCH AND TEACHING

The Oxpo Award

awarded to Lea Muller- Funk