Meret Ebsary says attending Oxford University has been a goal since she was a junior high student. (Submitted by Meret Ebsary)

Newfoundland and Labrador’s newest Rhodes Scholar is headed to Oxford University this fall.

Meret Ebsary was born in St. Anthony and grew up in St. John’s, where she graduated from Memorial University with an honours degree in political science. She is now completing her master’s degree at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, specializing in global health governance.

“I am so excited. Oh my gosh, I’m over the moon. This is the most incredible opportunity,” Ebsary told CBC Radio’s On the Go from Switzerland.

Established in 1902, the Rhodes Scholarship is considered the most prestigious post-graduate scholarship in the world. One recipient is selected from N.L. every year.

Ebsary said getting accepted into the university has been a goal since she was in junior high.

“Oxford has always been, I think, a long-term goal for me. It was always something that I looked up to,” she said.

However, Ebsary said, she pushed off applying for a few years, never feeling it was the right time.

“Even when I applied this year, I didn’t feel like it was the right timing. It was just the last year that I could apply. So I’m really glad that I did,” she said.

Applicants must be under 24 years old, or 27 if they had finished their undergraduate degree in the last two years.

High flyer

For Ebsary, Oxford’s appeal is the community of scholars she’ll be able to meet with.

“I think there’s a lot of people there who want to be change makers and who have an ambition to, you know, change the world, especially amongst the Rhodes community,” she said.

The scholarship provides her with two to three years of fully-funded academic study at Oxford, including fees and a stipend for living.

She said the COVID-19 pandemic had a big influence on what she chose to study, which coincided while she was doing for her bachelor’s degree at MUN.

Meret Ebsary says joining the Rhodes Scholar community will connected to a network of scholars. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/The Associated Press)

She said she also came to understand the health threat was having an impact around the world, not just on individuals.

“I wanted to use my background in political science to address those gaps that we were seeing in health-care policy that became really fatal during the pandemic,” said Ebsary.

“I wanted to see what the problems were and to help work to find a solution. And that’s what motivated me to pursue global health.”

That research focus took her to the University of Geneva.

Ebsary said her focus at Oxford will be on women’s political history in Newfoundland and Labrador — picking up from her honours thesis where she researched women’s suffrage in the province.

“Right now I’m working on the eugenics movement in Newfoundland. And so in Oxford, I want to continue that and work on how women in Newfoundland have contributed to international political thought,” she said.

She said she doesn’t know of any previous research on Newfoundland and Labrador and the eugenics movement — a discredited school of thought made popular in the late 19th and 20th Centuries that focused on ideas of selective breeding.

Ebsary says she wants to make her research accessible to more readers, whether it’s working in academia, teaching or writing.

“I also have always had sort of goals towards diplomacy and I haven’t quite written off politics or government yet,” she said.

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