English three off to Cambridge

The scholarship is one of only 50 awarded annually by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to non-US citizens for study at Cambridge.

"I guess you could say that I was pretty surprised that Bill Gates wanted to sponsor a PhD in Communist Poetry," says Ariane Welch, one of three PhD students from the University's English department heading off to Cambridge this year.

Welch is studying poets such as Louis Zukofsky, a New York Jew who belonged to a group of left-leaning avant-garde poets known as the Objectivists who came to prominence in the 1930s. After years of relative obscurity his work is now being rediscovered by scholars and a younger generation of poets.

"Poets like Zukofsy embrace the formal innovations of Modernist textual practice, but integrate that within a communistic vision of social organisation," Welch explains.

Welch says her study will look at their work alongside linguistic theories from the 1930s and 40s, such as Soviet linguistic theory.

"In literary studies, linguistics enables very close analysis of texts and provides extra evidence for arguments about meaning. I also feel strongly that teaching and learning about linguistics empowers people with critical literacy - the ability to read between the lines of texts."

In hearing news of her scholarship Welch praised the University's English department, which "offered me a challenging and rigorous education."

Welch's extra-curricular activities have included visiting refugees in Port Headland to record their accounts of isolation and other punishments, and travelling throughout NSW teaching regional high school students debating and public speaking skills.

"I'm looking forward to getting involved in political activism at Cambridge," she says. She hopes eventually to be employed as an academic "in an English Department somewhere."

"It feels like a very difficult aspiration these days, with cuts to traditional arts subjects in particular, so I hope that receiving a Cambridge PhD might increase my chances of getting a job."

Joining Welch in Cambridge is Sascha Morrell, who has been awarded a Trinity College External Research Studentship, and Robbie Moore, who recently won a Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Scholarship. All three are supervised by the English Department's Dr Julian Murphet.

"I think it's a testament to Dr Julian Murphet's teaching and supervision that three of his students are heading to Cambridge to pursue PhDs in modernism studies," Welch says. She also credits Professor Jim Martin from linguistics studies for playing a key role in her success. -University of Sydney