Hassan Ould Moctar, recipient of 2016 NUI Travelling Studentship in Development Studies receiving his award from NUI Chancellor Dr Maurice Manning at the 2016 NUI Awards Ceremony.
In your experience, what have been the benefits of holding an NUI award?
The Travelling Studentship has proved invaluable to me in supporting myself in London as well as in Mauritania, where I am currently carrying out overseas fieldwork for the academic year 2017/2018. It is also a valuable addition to my academic CV which will hopefully pave the way for future achievements.
"The Travelling Studentship has proved
invaluable to me in supporting myself in London
as well as in Mauritania. It is also a valuable addition
to my academic CV which will hopefully pave
the way for future achievements."
What advice would you give to prospective Travelling Studentship applicants?
I would advise those wishing to apply for the Travelling Studentship in Humanities and Social Sciences to firstly, and most obviously, have a clear and feasible research proposal prepared. This means being able to situate your research question within a specific body of academic literature and explain how this particular question addresses gaps or shortcomings in that literature. However, it is also crucial to have thought about the specific institution(s) in which you wish to carry out this research project. Do you have a supervisor in mind? How does this person’s research interests fit with your own project? Are you in contact with them? How will the institution more broadly facilitate your ambitions, in terms of relevant research networks, seminar series, library resources etc.? All of this will serve to indicate that your project is not just academically relevant, but also feasible.
What have been your major achievements to date?
Hassan pictured with fellow 2016 Maynooth University NUI awardwinners (L-R) Bronagh McShane, Gene Carolan and Brian Hughes.
On the 9th of June 2017, I presented a paper entitled ‘EU Border Externalisation and the Boundaries of Belonging in Mauritania’ at a conference at University College London (UCL). The conference was organised by the UCL Migration Research Unit under the theme ‘Between Borders: Exploring Spaces of Exclusion and Belonging in Global Migration.’ I also successfully passed my first-year upgrade viva without corrections in June 2017. This meant that I could travel to Mauritania in September 2017 to commence the second year of my PhD, which is devoted to overseas fieldwork. Finally, I wrote an article entitled ‘Whither the Rights of the Digital Subject?’ for Volume 10 of the SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research, which was published in October 2017.
In 2018, two NUI Travelling Studentships will be offered in the Sciences.
The closing date is Friday 23 March 2018.
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