This is Shannon Laribo and she received the 2016 UKA Kent-Fulbright Scholarship for her Master’s degree in Methods of Social Research. This scholarship is offered in partnership with the US-UK Fulbright Commission and supported by the University of Kent in America for a US citizen to undertake postgraduate studies at Kent. She shared her story with us.
After becoming interested in race studies during undergraduate study, I wanted to become an expert in the field. I hoped to acquire a skill set in research methodology in order to ensure that my future contributions to race and ethnicity research would be valid and significant. However, this depended on financial contribution. Looming student loan debt from my undergraduate study made it impossible to embark on a more extensive academic journey without financial help and so receiving this scholarship was both an immense honor, and a necessity.
I plan to eventually create research-based educational initiatives to reduce prejudice in children at primary and secondary schools. My aspirations are of a global scope as I hope to continuously research the development of prejudice and ways to address children’s prejudice in an international context.
My parents, who have never been to the United Kingdom, traveled here to move me in. As a lower-middle class, black American family in the south of the United States, international travel has neither been a priority or of easy access to us. The only family members who travelled to other countries were those of military background, otherwise the act was seen as one for the rich.
My father was from a military family and had lived in Spain when he was a small child. Given our financial and cultural constraints, he had not been back to Madrid and had never expected he would. Forty years later, I was able to take my father back to Spain where we began a scavenger hunt for his home, neighbourhood, school and more. This experience was of utmost importance to my family and me.
I am so inspired by fellow students. Given my values of diversity and inclusion, I feel that I am consistently learning from the diverse backgrounds and thoughts of other students. In seminars, students may make sense of the coursework through examples of their experiences in their home country. To enrich the discussion we often further compare and contrast our varied experiences. I am building lasting friendships with students from all over the world!
I appreciate Kent’s uniquely diverse environment and particularly the heightened amount of international students that live on campus at Woolf College. I am exposed to people with a variety of experiences not just culturally, but also in their stage of life. I am meeting students who have completed other master’s degrees in other countries, students who have worked for several years and are established within their career, students of all ages and walks of life.