Honours student recipient of prestigious ENS Scholarship

3 Apr 2020

Congratulations to School of Languages and Cultures former Honours student Amy Bergman who is one of the recipients of a very prestigious scholarship to be part of the ‘Sélection Internationale of the École Normale Supérieure’ (ENS) in Paris.  

The Scholarship is an annual admissions path offered to ten international students in Sciences and ten students in Humanities to study in Paris for three years eventually graduating with a Masters degree plus the ‘diplôme de l’ENS’, which is a year’s worth of coursework.

“I’m particularly excited to be going to the ENS because it’s such a renowned and prestigious institution: many of France’s greatest minds studied there, like Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre and Pierre Bourdieu, so to have the chance to become a part of such an academic community is enormous and I’m immensely lucky.” Amy said.

Amy’s discipline is literature and her research proposal as part of the application was about the book « 53 jours » ("53 days") by French author Georges Perec, who came to UQ in 1981 to be a writer-in-residence. Georges was going to be in Australia for a total of 53 days, so he was inspired to try and write a book in that period, but he died not long after he got back to Paris and never finished it. What Georges had written was eventually published along with his notes and drafts, and throughout there are lots of Australian references weaved in, particularly names that he saw while he was here. Amy stumbled across this book and the story of its composition by accident, and was very surprised and interested to see French literature colliding with 1981 Brisbane. Amy will be looking at those references to Australia in her Masters.  

“I send my thanks to the French department, especially Barbara, Joe and Amy, who were instrumental in supporting me during the application phase and not to mention the years of time and effort into helping me be the best French student I can be! I couldn’t have done it without them”. Amy said.

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