To be euphemistic, I had quite the turbulent upbringing. Growing up in rural South Australia, my school attendance was sporadic, with a difficult home life and sometimes homelessness.
I left home at 16, making the most gut-wrenching decision to have no further contact with my family, to chase safety and freedom. Refusing to let me give up on my education, my school counsellor and teachers offered me refuge to complete high school. I graduated as dux of my school, and was accepted into both medicine and law at the University of Adelaide, with a Principal’s Scholarship. It was at this point that I began to imagine a career and life beyond anything I had encountered as examples growing up.
I began working as a teenager to be able to support myself. However, part-time minimum-wage jobs and student support payments are insufficient to cover the cost of living plus educational expenses.
Thus, with an absolute resoluteness to pursue tertiary education, the first year of my undergraduate studies heralded the beginning of my successful spree of applying for merit and equity scholarships. A decade after my tertiary education journey began, I’m grateful to have received a significant number of scholarships, particularly for postgraduate education, given that student support payments are unavailable for this. This includes being awarded a federal government Research Training Program Stipend to complete my PhD, a highly competitive prize awarded to Australian citizens of the highest exceptional research potential.
Now, in addition to having been admitted as a solicitor to the NSW Supreme Court, working part-time at the Federal Court as a solicitor and teaching law at the University, I’m working on my PhD which is on political identity in Afghanistan during Soviet and American interventions, and the implications for peacebuilding.
Winning the merit-based 2022 Wentworth Medal has provided me with the funds to be able to present on my doctoral research on identity-based conflicts and peacebuilding at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and pursue additional doctoral fieldwork throughout Central Asia and the Middle East. Scholarships have been transformative for my education and my life.
They have allowed me to pursue my dream of becoming a ‘pracademic’ – a peacebuilder, researcher and educator. The importance of scholarships in facilitating access to educational opportunities for people from non-traditional backgrounds and to ending intergenerational cycles of disadvantage cannot be overstated.
Providing opportunities for such cohorts not only rewards dedication, passion and hard work, but also inherently allows for the expansion of knowledge – enhancing our ability to grapple with issues of national and global significance in unique ways.
Written for Sydney Alumni Magazine. Photography by Stefanie Zingsheim
