Ramsay postgraduate scholarships awarded to 31 young Australians

Thirty one young Australians have won Ramsay postgraduate scholarships to study overseas worth up to $90,000 a year.

Benjamin Dickson and Isabelle Napier have both won prestigious Ramsay postgraduate scholarships for study overseas. Photo: Jane Dempster

A mathematician, a naval officer, a paediatric doctor, a quantum physicist and a theologian are among this year’s winners of Australia’s most valuable scholarship to do postgraduate study overseas.

The Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation on Wednesday announced the 31 scholars who have won an award this year, each of them worth up to $90,000 for their period of study.

Ben Dickson, a paediatric doctor who has worked in the Northern Territory with indigenous communities – as well as in Papua New Guinea, Myanmar, Samoa, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Indonesia – said that his scholarship would allow him to make a broader impact in his work with infectious diseases by spreading his wings on the research side. He will do a one year masters degree at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

”My background has been clinical and I’m self-taught in research. This masters is basically for me to gain formal research training,” he said.

”I could go overseas and treat individual patients with Médecins Sans Frontières, for example. But to me, I can have a larger scale impact through research in public health and policy. And I’m hoping to get that skill set.”

Already Dr Dickson has started working on the research side and is currently part of a National Health and Medical Research Council funded project on antibiotic resistance in nine countries in the Asia-Pacific.

Other scholarship winners include: Yifan Guo, a Melbourne mathematician who will do a master of advanced study in pure mathematics at the University of Cambridge: naval officer Theodore Squires, who will do an MBA at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a special focus on how to manage new technologies such artificial intelligence; quantum physicist Pablo Bonilla, who will do a PhD in theoretical physics at Harvard focusing on quantum computing; and Anglican theologian Aden Cotterill who will do a PhD at Cambridge looking at pluralism in Western societies and its impact on faith and belief.

Another scholarship winner, Isabelle Napier, will do a PhD in international relations at Oxford.

Ms Napier, who began her career in social policy, food and agricultural sustainability, was a founding member of the University of Sydney’s Policy Lab.

Her doctorate – which continues a theme she is exploring in the masters degree she is currently doing at Oxford – will examine several 20th century white women and the relationship they had with the groups an individuals they allied with around social causes including indigenous Australian human rights, Ethiopian liberation, Indian nationalism and American civil rights.

Ms Napier sees it as offering guidance on bridging cultural divides and she hopes on day to contribute to creating Australian foreign policy which that foster international trust and collaboration

“I guess the big question I’m interested in in international relations is how different ways of relating to one another across international borders are established, or nourished, or destroyed, or rebuilt,” she said.

“History is an extraordinary resource for thinking through today’s challenges.”