The Graduate School had the pleasure of welcoming the University’s latest cohort of Felix Scholars at a reception held on 28 October. The event was attended by a number of Felix Scholars enrolled in previous years, along with a number of key academic and administrative staff.

The highly prestigious Felix Scholarships are awarded each year to PhD and Masters candidates from India and developing countries such as South Africa and Ghana. The selection process, which spans three Universities (Reading, Oxford and the School of Oriental & African Studies) is fiercely competitive and the candidates who are awarded funding can be confident that they have earned their place. Professor Dianne Berry OBE, Dean of Postgraduate Research Studies, said ‘Felix Scholars are consistently among our most impressive students, as shown by their having secured such a respected studentship. We are delighted to be able to welcome our new intake of Scholars to Reading’.

The main aim of the Felix Scholarship, whose Founder wished to remain anonymous, is to enable the best students to experience academic study and culture outside of their home country. The original country of choice for the recipients of the Felix Scholarship was India for several reasons: it has an excellent and broad pool of very fine educational establishments; it offers an excellent infrastructure to facilitate the selection of the Felix scholars; it has a very high regard for higher education and the English language, both written and spoken, is the second language at the majority of the higher education establishments. Since the first scholarships were awarded in 1991/92, over 250 students, the majority of which have been Indian, have completed their studies across the three Universities thanks to the generous funding provided by the Felix Scholarship.

Further information about the Felix Scholarships is available on their website at http://www.felixscholarship.org/