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Remembering Honorary Fellow President Jimmy Carter
29 Dec 2024
The Oxford-McBain Scholarships are available to students undertaking the MSc in International Human Rights Law, a two-year, part-time degree offered by the Faculty of Law in collaboration with the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights. The Bonavero Institute was proudly founded by, and is permanently housed at, Mansfield College.
The degree gives lawyers as well as other human rights advocates from around the world the opportunity to develop their understanding of this complex area of legal practice. The course involves a combination of distance learning and summer residentials in Oxford, enabling participants to pursue study alongside their careers and care responsibilities.
Five years of McBain Scholars
Since the McBain Scholarships were first established in 2019, we have welcomed five McBain Scholars, with three of those students coming to us from Ukraine. Now, with their permanent endowment, the Oxford-McBain Scholarships will exist in perpetuity.
Talented graduate students are essential to Oxford’s academic mission, and play a key role in driving the University’s world-leading research. Fully funded scholarships at the University of Oxford provide graduate students with the opportunity to develop and study in a stimulating learning environment. They prevent financial hardship becoming a barrier to further study and career development, and ensure that the University can continue to educate and nurture the world’s greatest minds. For these reasons, the University has invested in graduate scholarships through the Graduate Endowment Matched Scholarships Scheme (GEMS). The funding is for endowed matched funding, ensuring the creation of scholarships to support students in priority academic areas in perpetuity.
“We are so grateful to Alastair and all the McBain family for this outstanding support to permanently establish these important scholarships. This generosity, coupled with funding from the University of Oxford’s ground-breaking GEMS initiative, enables the further study of human rights law at graduate level. Not only do the McBain Scholarships benefit their recipients, their existence also helps further tie Mansfield College to the work of the world-leading Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, of which we are so tremendously proud.”
Graduates making their mark
Graduates of the MSc in International Human Rights Law go on to have a significant global impact through their work.
One previous Oxford-McBain Scholar, Dr Kateryna Busol, is a Ukrainian lawyer specialising in international humanitarian, criminal law, transitional justice, gender and cultural heritage. She credits the scholarship with allowing her to enhance her analytical skills and broaden her perspective on conflict-related legal issues. Through the course, Kateryna was also able to deepen her understanding of international criminal law – a vital discipline to hold individuals accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including those affecting Ukraine today; and studying the international rights of women and gender-related discrimination enabled her to refine her focus on gendered justice in conflict settings, as she continues to advocate for the rights and recovery of atrocity survivors.
Kateryna has published on the weaponisation of cultural heritage, conflict-related sexual violence, reparations and the achievements and avenues of Ukraine’s transitional justice process. Kateryna has emphasised the centrality of Ukrainian perspectives and the idealised symbolism of Nuremberg in addressing the ongoing aggression against Ukraine.
“Having had the good fortune to enjoy an international career and having being exposed to a variety of national environments, I have formed the strong view that education, respect for the rule of law, and for human rights are the key differentiators leading to a strong and stable society. Coming from this fortunate background, I am delighted to be able to give something back by supporting Mansfield and the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights.”
Introducing our first Oxford McBain Scholar
Mansfield’s first recipient of the permanently endowed Oxford-McBain Scholarship is Nathalia Gonzalez Gutierrez, a Venezuelan, London-based writer and community organiser, who began the MSc course earlier this year. Nathalia’s research is currently focused on examining to what extent the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recognise the so-called implicit right to protest, and to what extent recognition of this right is dependent on the court’s differing normative understandings of democracy, the relationship between protests and democracy, and extra institutional forms of political participation and democracy.
"This scholarship has allowed me to dedicate myself whole-heartedly to my research interests and academic development, which, unfortunately, is a privilege that is all too rare, and for which I am very grateful. It has also allowed me to continue pursuing unpaid community work, which means I remain critically aware of the disparities between the state of human rights ‘on paper’ and in real life."
