Find out more about applying for the Rhodes Scholarship

Find out more about applying for the Rhodes Scholarship

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The Rhodes Scholarship is the oldest (first awarded in 1902) international scholarship programme, enabling outstanding young people from around the world to study at the University of Oxford.

The application process is explained as you navigate through the pages below.

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Resources for Further Reading

Rhodes Scholars in Residence and Rhodes House staff have been exploring the issues of legacy and equity through various readings and discussion groups. You can read more below.

Edwin Cameron At Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture Justice Edwin Cameron (South Africa-at-Large & Keble 1976)

Resources for Further Reading

You can read Justice Edwin Cameron's (South Africa-at-Large & Keble 1976) powerful reflections on change, injustice and looking to the past in his 2020 speech. He gave this address to Southern African Scholars as they were about to embark on their journey to Oxford.

Former Warden, Charles Conn (Massachusetts & Balliol 1983), has also written a paper on 'Thinking About Historical Legacies: Looking for Just Principles and Processes' which is useful when considering and re-assessing legacies.

As well as looking at the life of Cecil Rhodes, it is important to consider the wider context of colonialism, imperialism, racism and white privilege. Considering inclusion is also important and we recommend this link written by Professor Lynn Shore.

Below are some other initial readings which might be helpful, including several written by Rhodes Scholars. If you have suggestions to add to this list, please email our Director of Communications, Babette Littlemore.

Legacy and Equity Resource List

Rhodes Scholars in Residence and Rhodes House staff have been exploring these issues through various readings and discussion groups. You can access this reading list here. We hope they might encourage you to look at some of these issues in new ways, or to promote further thinking and research.

A brief selection from the reading list:

Claudia Rankine (2019)
I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, poet Claudia Rankine earned a BA at Williams College and an MFA at Columbia University. Rankine has published several collections of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, the PEN Center USA Poetry Award, and the Forward poetry prize; Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric (2004); and Nothing in Nature is Private (1994), which won the Cleveland State Poetry Prize.

Stuart Hall on Humour and Whiteness
How Stuart Hall Exposed the Racist Agenda Behind ‘Harmless’ British Humour
Stuart Hall was a 1951 Rhodes Scholar, who found his experience at Oxford quite unbearable, and reflected on it in many books that he wrote in the course of his life. He was one of the most renowned cultural critics and critical theorists of our times, and he changed the ways in which race, class and culture were studied.

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