Oxford student awarded prestigious Trudeau Scholarship
21 May 09
Oxford doctoral student Lindsey Richardson is to be awarded up to $180,000 from the prestigious Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. Lindsey, a student in the Department of Sociology, is one of 15 DPhil students to be selected in the latest round of Trudeau Scholarships worth a total of $2.7 million.
The Trudeau Scholarship enables Lindsey to study the impact of employment on the well being, social inclusion and health of injection drug-users. Her life, to date, has been focused on understanding and raising barriers for excluded populations. She worked as a Parliamentary Intern in Ottawa, Canada, on poverty, immigration and disability issues; followed by a post as a policy analyst for the City of Vancouver where her responsibilities included policy responses to urban social development and drug misuse.
Lindsey’s policy and development experience have led her to the conclusion that the consequences of moral stereotyping, or stigma, can be socially, economically and culturally devastating. She reflects that, ‘stigma causes individuals to be classified as behaviours, not as people.’
Lindsey RichardsonStigma causes individuals to be classified as behaviours, not as people.
The Trudeau Scholarships are helping students advance research on topics such as affordable housing, gambling addiction, water supply management, assistance to refugees, and health worker migration. The Scholars are all actively engaged in their fields and expected to become leading national and international authorities on issues that affect local and global societies.
Foundation President PG Forest said: ‘Trudeau Scholarships not only accelerate the careers of those who receive them, but also enable recipients to make a significant contribution to Canada and to Canadians. We reward excellence and provide young doctorate students with the best conditions to ground their work in the real world.’
The Trudeau Scholarships are the most generous awards of their kind in Canada. Up to 15 Trudeau Scholarships are awarded each year to support doctoral candidates pursuing research in areas of pressing concern. The annual $60,000 bursaries, for up to four years, subsidise tuition fees and living expenses and allow the Scholars to travel for research and scholarly networking and to publicise their research.
In addition to receiving financial support, Trudeau Scholars can benefit from the expertise and knowledge of Trudeau Fellows and Mentors, highly accomplished individuals in the Trudeau Foundation community who lead in both academic and non-academic settings.