Stanley Ray scholarship - University of Birmingham

PhD students, and Stanley Ray Scholars, Lluís, Zheyu, and Sam tell us about their studies and the impact that the award has made.

Scholarships and awards make an enormous difference to the opportunities available to our students.

The three recipients of the Stanley Ray Scholarships share their personal experiences of the impact this award has made to them and their studies. Lluís Jerez Bertolín (MRes Late Antiquity, 2019; PhD candidate in Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology) is studying the Ancient Roman gig economy; Zheyu Lin (PhD candidate, Art History and Music) is focusing on the influence of Western art and music in China following the Cultural Revolution; and Sam Powell (PhD candidate, Egyptology) is restoring the provenance to ancient Egyptian funerary figures across UK museums.

Lluis Jerez Bertolin

Transcript

My thesis is on rural wage labour in Late Antique North Africa. Well, the way I like to frame it a bit is the age of the Roman gig economy. Basically, I am looking at a topic that is often neglected in scholarship, which is the impact and the organization of casual wage labour in rural areas. So for example, especially in the harvest, there's been some literature on that, but there's never been like a full fully-fledged model of how it works and how is it organized and what dynamics are in play. So I'm trying to contribute that.

I had a lot of help from my family and I didn't want to be a strain on their resources and considered quitting. But especially after I applied for some different funding, I didn't get it in the in my second year. So I was in a bit of a tough situation. But the email that I got the Stanley Ray Scholarship - my tuition fees will be paid off, I will get a stipend - That was a huge weight off the top of my shoulders.

I could finally not have to work in my first year. I worked part-time 10 hours a week doing that and I found I could just dedicate myself to the thesis. It's these decisions.

I have managed to edit to a degree of quality thanks to the scholarship in scholarships to really, really make an impact, especially because more and more a lot of people just cannot access postgraduate programs. They cannot access these. They really rely on getting a scholarship and, you know, scholarships, when there's when there's a pinch, they tend to be the first things to go. And so their contributions really help with people that have a strain on their resources to really tap into potential that otherwise would be wasted and really for some for a lot of people, they really make a difference.

Zheyu Lin

Sam Powell

The Stanley Ray Scholarship was established in 2014 thanks to a gift left in the will of Stanley Ray. It is awarded annually to postgraduate students in the Arts, excluding Law, and with a preference for those studying French, Music, English or Shakespeare Studies, on a Masters or Doctoral Research degree programme.

Stanley Ray worked in the chemistry industry, first in research and development and then subsequently in sales. His wife Betty studied Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham and latterly the University of Nice. During his retirement, and following Betty’s death, Stanley had drawn closer to the University of Birmingham, attending music recitals and supporting postgraduate Modern Languages students. Stanley passed away in 2009 but thanks to his generosity, his legacy endures and many students like Luiz, Sam and Zheyu have since been able to follow their passion for the arts.