Yale College senior Naina Agrawal-Hardin, a former student in the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, is among 35 U.S. scholars who have been selected as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, a postgraduate scholarship program that provides full tuition toward study and research in any subject at the University of Cambridge.
The Gates Cambridge Scholars program was established in 2000 through a $210 million donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Since the first class in 2001, it has awarded 2,218 scholarships to scholars from 112 countries.
Agrawal-Hardin, who is studying how the effects of climate change are being litigated globally, will pursue a Master of Philosophy degree in the field of Anthropocene studies, with a focus on how climate change projections have historically been received by a wide range of actors, including within government, the fossil fuel sector, and the general public.
“My research will inform the emerging field of transnational climate litigation and sharpen debates about the distribution of responsibility for today’s climate crisis,” she said.
As a Grand Strategy student, Agrawal-Hardin conducted a summer research project on prospects for climate litigation in the Maldives, an archipelago off the southwestern coast of India, traveling to the country to learn about island ecologies and local environmental advocacy.
Her research in the Maldives confirmed an interest in expanding her horizons globally, Agrawal-Hardin said. This, along with an interest in better understanding advances in climate litigation in the U.K. and Europe, informed her decision to pursue the M.Phil. degree in Anthropocene studies at Cambridge. That the course is also based in the university’s Department of Geography, which will be a new discipline for her, was also appealing.
“It will mean I will learn a new way of thinking and, combined with my background in history, it will allow me to grow as a scholar,” she said.