Education: Somerville College in collaboration with the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development (OICSD) and the Piramal family, announced the Dr Gita Piramal Scholarship for Indian students. The scholarship programme will support Indian students to pursue their higher education at the University of Oxford. 

Students can check the full eligibility criteria and other details at some.ox.ac.uk/the-oicsd/scholarships/dr-gita-piramal-scholarship.

The scholarship programme was launched to honour Dr Gita Piramal's contribution to academia and corporate leadership. Dr Piramal, who is one of India’s leading business historians, has been a long-standing associate of Somerville College. She served as a Senior Associate Fellow and a mentor to many. With her incredible contribution to the business world, she has shaped the thinking of future business leaders.

Eligibility for the scholarship

According to the Somerville University of Oxford's website, the candidates must be ordinarily resident in India ant the following full-time courses are eligible:

• MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Nature Recovery
• MSc in Economics for Development
• MSc in Education (Child Development and Education)
• MSc in Education (Comparative and International Education)
• MSc in Education (Digital and Social Change)
• MSc in Energy Systems
• MSc in Environmental Change and Management
• MSc in Global Governance and Diplomacy
• MSc in Global Health Science and Epidemiology
• MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance
• MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management

What is the selection process?

The website suggests the scholarship is only tenable at Somerville. "All eligible candidates who have applied for graduate study by the relevant funding deadline will be considered, regardless of which college preference is included in the graduate application. Successful candidates will be transferred to Somerville in order to take up the scholarship. Shortlisting and interviews are anticipated to take place in April 2025," it read.

All candidates who meet the residency criteria and have applied for one of the eligible courses will be emailed at the end of February 2025, it added.

"They will be invited to complete a short online form to confirm they would like to be considered for the scholarship and that their studies are relevant to the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development. They will also be asked to provide information about their financial circumstances," the statement read.