Redland High Student Wins Prestigious Harvard Award

Kylie Murray, who graduated from Redland High School in 2000 to go first to St Andrews and then to Oxford where she is studying for a DPhil in Medieval Scottish Literature, has beaten tough competition to win a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship.

This Fellowship will allow her to spend ten months in Harvard working in Celtic Languages and Literatures. It will also allow her to travel the US to examine manuscripts that she never imagined having the chance to see ‘in the flesh' at places like the Pierpont Library in New York and Huntington Library in California.

It was while Kylie was giving a paper at Harvard in October that she formed her determination to try for the Frank Knox Fellowship. Her paper was on dreams in Medieval Scottish literature and she met people at Harvard working on dreams in Irish and Welsh; the opportunity to work with specialists with similar interests was a huge attraction. However, there were fifteen other candidates in the final interview stage of the selection process so Kylie was thrilled to win.

Kylie emailed Caroline Bateson, Headmistress of Redland High, with the news, "I still can't believe it! I couldn't be any happier if I'd won the lottery! It goes without saying, of course, that I could not have achieved any of this - Harvard, Oxford, or St Andrews, without Redland High. I shall never, ever, forget the opportunities the School gave me, or how well the teachers nurtured my passion for knowledge. I was a John James Scholarship girl and am so grateful for the opportunity that award gave me to experience and benefit from a Redland High education.”

Mrs Bateson said, "We were delighted that Kylie was able to give the keynote speech at the AGM of our Old Girls' Guild meeting recently and to share with us her passion for Medieval dream literature. To have this wonderful news so soon after that event is a real bonus and the whole School congratulates Kylie on her achievement.”