JANE KERSHAW:  PEMBROKE’S JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOLAR

Jane Kershaw, Modern History 2000, is studying at Harvard University on a Kennedy Memorial Scholarship for the academic year 2004-2005.

The scholarships, created in 1965 to honor the late President John F. Kennedy, and which Jane describes as “Rhodes Scholarships in reverse,” are given to 12 graduates of British universities each year for study at either Harvard or MIT.

They are awarded on the basis of an applicant’s intellectual ability, personal and communications skills, and extra-curricular interests and accomplishments.

Jane received the highest First in Modern History in her graduating class at Oxford.

Jane, 22, reports she is having “an extremely fun and interesting,” year at Harvard, studying Swedish, archeology of the Levant, classical archeology, and Norse literature.

“My particular interest is in gender archeology,” Jane says. “The archeology I am studying can shed much light on the status of women in Anglo-Saxon society.”

The daughter of a Mobil Oil Company executive, Jane was born in Singapore and lived as a child in New Zealand and London.

She chose Pembroke as an undergraduate because she wanted to attend Oxford and, “because Pembroke seemed a charming, informal, and pretty college, and just the right size.  I was not disappointed, she says.  “I loved it.”  At Pembroke she was particularly inspired by Senior History Tutor Dr. Adrian Gregory.  Jane plans to return to Oxford in 2005 to pursue a D.Phil. in Anglo-Saxon or Scandinavian archeology.

Jane is easily adapting to life in Boston and has become, in short order (naturally), a Boston Red Sox fan.  She can be reached at jane.kershaw@pembroke-oxford.com.