Exeter to offer Graduate Scholarships for top students from Ben Gurion University, Israel

Exeter College is delighted to announce the creation of the Rivka Carmi Scholarship, in partnership with Ben Gurion University (BGU) in the Negev, Israel. The scholarship is for top graduate students from BGU wishing to read for a postgraduate degree at Oxford University.

The Rivka Carmi Scholarship, worth the full cost of tuition fees and a generous maintenance grant, is funded for five years in the first instance, although it is hoped that it will eventually be funded in perpetuity. The Scholarship is open to all graduates of BGU who secure a place at Oxford for a Masters or DPhil degree in any field of study. There is a particular focus on supporting women, and those from minorities or underprivileged backgrounds.

“The Rivka Carmi Scholarships will broaden the horizons of BGU students through the one-of-a-kind relationship with this exceptional educational institute,” said Professor Raymond Dwek, of the Glycobiology Institute at Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Exeter College who has been a close partner in the creation of the Scholarship as well as in the creation of the British-Israel Life Sciences Council of which he and Professor Carmi are co-chairs.

Professor Dwek noted that collaboration between Oxford and BGU was foreshadowed by David Ben-Gurion, first prime minister of Israel, when he remarked, “…I dream of a sort of Hebrew Oxford in the Negev.”

The Scholarship is named after the current BGU President, Professor Rivka Carmi, who became the first female Dean of an Israeli medical school and the first woman President of an Israeli University. Carmi has also devoted much of her professional career – both medical and administrative – to working with those on the margins of society, and striving to improve their lives. “I am humbled and honored by the initiative of BGU’s great supporter and my personal adviser and friend Professor Raymond Dwek, whose commitment to help BGU realise David Ben-Gurion’s dream to create an Oxford in the desert has inspired us all. I hope that this initiative will open new opportunities for collaborations between the two Institutes to promote education and science,” Professor Carmi said.