Former Grahamstown resident Beth Vale, 23, has won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England, where she will complete a three-year PhD in Social Policy and Intervention. Her project will be a qualitative study on how HIV/Aids-affected families respond to primary care interventions, and although she will be based at Oxford, her field research will bring her back to South Africa.
Former Grahamstown resident Beth Vale, 23, has won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England, where she will complete a three-year PhD in Social Policy and Intervention. Her project will be a qualitative study on how HIV/Aids-affected families respond to primary care interventions, and although she will be based at Oxford, her field research will bring her back to South Africa.
Vale graduated with her Honours degree at Rhodes earlier this year, where she was chairperson of the student HIV/Aids Resistance Campaign (Sharc) – that was a seed for her growing interest in HIV/Aids advocacy. She is currently completing a Masters degree in Sociology at the University of Cape Town and is excited to head off to the UK.
"The great thing about Oxford is that it's such an interdisciplinary environment, that you get to learn so much from other students who are not only smart, but share similar values to you," she said. "And they have the same idea about the kind of society that they'd like to see," Vale told Grocott's Mail on Sunday afternoon.
She described the selection process for the scholarship as gruelling and emotionally taxing, particularly the interview she underwent on Sunday morning. "They go hard on you, to try to get a sense of your character and how you handle pressure," she said. But just a few hours after her interview she was given the good news.
"It definitely hasn't sunk in at all yet," she said. "I think I just need to sleep, and just spend time with my friends, and then we can get to the celebration." And what sort of celebration does Vale have in mind? "I'll most likely just go out and eat lots of sushi," she said.
