Being a Gates scholar
Stephanie Gabriela Lopez (2014) spent the last year at Pembroke as a Gates Scholar.
Stephanie’s family are from El Salvador, although they fled to America in the late 1980s during the civil war. Directly before arriving in Cambridge she graduated from California State University, Fresno with a Bachelor’s degree, after taking a double-major in Political Science and Mass Communication and Journalism. She then became the first Fresno student to receive a Gates Cambridge Scholarship when she was accepted at Pembroke to study for a one-year master’s in Philosophy in Latin American Studies.
A year later, on the day before she returned home to California, she took a break from packing to speak to our College Recorder about her year at Pembroke.
How did you find yourself at Pembroke?
I looked at all the College websites when I was applying and Pembroke looked like the prettiest College. I also read everywhere that Pembroke has the best food and I love food, so that definitely pulled me in! Looking at the College’s history I was excited to see that it was founded by a woman, so I put it down as my first choice and luckily I was accepted.
What was the subject of your MPhil?
My dissertation focused on violence and insecurity in Central America’s Northern Triangle (Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador). I looked at how the situation we’re seeing in the region now can be traced back to the Cold War. One of the main challenges is that among scholars there is some disagreement about which data to use, because things like the official homicide rates do not include all the victims of gangs and cartels or drug trafficking organisations. It is a bit of a depressing topic, but it definitely needs to be studied.
While writing my dissertation, I also wrote essays on Honduras' recent child emigration crisis and the childhood experience of racism in Latin America through an analysis anti-racist media campaigns. In the future I hope to do some more work that focuses on child immigration from Central America to the United States.
What have you done outside of work?
Most of my extra-curricular activities have been through Gates because it is a really nice community of scholars from around the world. I edited the Gates Cambridge The Scholar Magazine and had a lot of fun to reading about what other scholars were working on. I also helped put together this year's Global Scholars Symposium.
Another project grew out of a conversation with one of my fellow Gates scholars, Sheina Lew-Levy. On 11th October, which is the International Day of the Girl Child, I shared a photo essay on Facebook depicting the various struggles of girl children from around the world. Sheina and I got talking about it and realised that although we had different perspectives on the issue, we had both travelled extensively and seen the suffering of women and girls across the world, especially in societies where there is extreme inequality. What we also saw was the way they get themselves out of that. I’ve seen girls getting up early to walk and get water for their families before school. They make the best out of it; women are strong, resilient, intelligent and we thought there should be a platform to celebrate these daily victories, so we set up wearesisterstories.org. We need to convey that message that being a woman is not a problem. It is society’s inequality that is the problem. I will work more on this project once I’m back home.
Overall, have you enjoyed your time here?
If it wasn’t for the scholarship I wouldn’t have been able to come to Cambridge at all, and I’m so grateful that I’ve had the opportunity – it has been a wild ride! I’m really sad to be leaving Cambridge but excited to see what the future holds – and I can’t wait to see my family and friends... and my dog.