Nine Yale seniors awarded fellowships to study at Oxford and Cambridge

In addition to the students previously announced in YaleNews as winners of Rhodes, Marshall, Gates-Cambridge scholarships, the following students have received fellowships or scholarships to study at Oxford and Cambridge universities.

Griffin Black

Griffin Black, originally from McLean, Virginia, has been awarded the Paul Mellon Fellowship.  He is a history major focusing on the U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction.

At Cambridge, Black will earn an M.Phil. in American history. His research will focus on transnational political movements, particularly the interplay between American and British abolitionists in the 19th century. The crux of this work will be tracing Frederick Douglass’s time lecturing throughout the United Kingdom 1845-1847. At Yale, Black is a member of Morse College, the Yale Alley Cats, the Yale Undergraduate Lincoln Association, and Christian Union. He is also a research assistant for Professor David Blight and Yale’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.

Clara Collier

Clara Collier is a senior majoring in German Studies. She has been awarded the Lidl Graduate Scholarship for the study of German at Oxford. 

Collier’s research concerns German-Jewish thought and the intersections between philosophy, philology, and hermeneutics and the study of literature during the German Enlightenment. Her senior essay on biblical poetics in the work of Moses Mendelssohn deals with the cultural politics and literary impact of translation between German and Hebrew in the 1740s-1780s. At Yale, she has been heavily involved with the Yale Political Union and the Journal of Literary Translation, as well as contributing to several other campus publications. At Oxford, she will pursue an M.St. in Modern Languages, and eventually plans to obtain a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature.

Caitlin Dermody

Caitlin Dermody is a sociology major and Education Studies Scholar from Elmhurst, Pennsylvania, and has been awarded the Rotary Global Grant Scholarship.

Dermody’s experience as a volunteer teacher’s assistant at Calvin Hill Daycare, an intern at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and a research assistant at the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy has shaped her research on systems of early childhood education and social and emotional learning. Outside of academics, Dermody is a first-year counselor and a Yale tour guide. As a recipient of the Global Grant Fellowship, she will attend Oxford to earn her M.Sc. in education (child development and education) next year. 

Mert Dilek

Mert Dilek has been awarded the Baer Pettit Studentship in the Humanities by Trinity College, Cambridge. He will pursue the M.Phil. degree in modern and contemporary English literature, and his research will focus on the evolution of the dramatic monologue in Victorian and modernist poetry.

Dilek is a double major in English and political science. His writing in the English department has been awarded the John Hubbard Curtis Prize. Outside of his studies, he has worked as a production and design editor at the Yale Daily News, a writing partner at the Yale College Writing Center, and an editorial intern at the Yale Law Journal. He has also contributed to over 20 theatrical productions on campus.

Alexander Epstein

Alexander Epstein is majoring in molecular, cellular and developmental biology and chemistry. He has been awarded both the Paul Mellon Fellowship and the Rotary Global Grant Scholarship for study at Cambridge.

In his spare time, he enjoys teaching math and science to elementary school students, and exploring his hometown of New York City. Epstein will be pursuing an M.Phil. at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, studying the structure of the clumps of protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease. After his time at Cambridge, he plans to obtain a Ph.D. in the biological sciences and to build a career studying the biology of human aging.

Sergio Infante

Each year, one Yale senior is awarded the Henry Fellowship which supports one year of study at Oxford or Cambridge. This year the Henry Fellowship has been awarded to Sergio Infante. 

Although born in Bogotá, Colombia, Infante has spent most of his life in the United States. At Yale, he studies history and his research focuses on the development of transnational diplomatic and intellectual networks in the aftermath of decolonization throughout the so-called Third World. On campus, Infante has worked at the Yale Center for British Art as a student guide and at La Casa Cultural Julia de Burgos (The Latino Cultural Center) as a student coordinator. At Cambridge, he will pursue South Asian Studies and finish up a long-term project titled “Of Embassies and Empires: Brazil in South Asia, 1945-1965.”

Eddie Maza

Senior Eddie Maza will begin a Master of Studies in theology and religion at Oxford University with the support of the Oxford-Bounden Graduate Scholarship and as a Titular Clarendon Scholar. 

Maza is majoring in the history of art with a certificate in Education Studies. He is originally from Englewood, New Jersey. Before coming to Yale, he spent a gap year at a religious seminary in Jerusalem, Israel. Maza has been heavily involved with the Yale University Art Gallery and Yale Center for British Art; he currently serves as a curatorial intern in American paintings and sculptures and as a gallery guide at the Yale University Art Gallery. Ultimately, he hopes to obtain a Ph.D. in the history of art with a focus on religion in modern art. 

Nina Mesfin

Nina Mesfin is an ethnicity, race, and migration major whose research interests lie at the cross-section between urban and cultural studies. Mesfin has been awarded the Paul Mellon Fellowship.

As a fellow in the Mellon Mays Fellowship Program, she has spent the last three years researching cultural heritage preservation efforts, both independently and as a research assistant for Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. This work culminated in her senior thesis analyzing Chicago’s historic churches as sites that inform senses of belonging by motivating social action, community formation, and the transmission of cultural values across generations. At Cambridge University, Mesfin plans to pursue an M.Phil. in social anthropology and hopes to focus her research on London’s ethnic enclaves.

Max Norman

Max Norman has been awarded an Ertegun Scholarship. He will study for a Master of Studies in modern languages at Oxford University.

Norman is currently interested in the relationship of literature to philosophy and the history of ideas, and, for the master’s, will continue the work he began in connection with his senior essay for the Literature Major on French and English Renaissance literature. In his spare time, he hopes to play chamber music and cycle through the countryside. 

Students interested in any of these fellowships should contact The Office of Funding and Fellowships for more information.