Asma Shakeel, a student at Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q), has won the 2024 Rhodes Scholarship — the third Hoya to win the oldest and most competitive international scholarship this year.
This is the first time in nearly 30 years that three scholars have been selected from Georgetown in the same year. Asma, a senior who researches missionary history in South Asia, is one of five recipients of the Rhodes Scholarship in India. She joins Charlie Wang, a University of Cambridge graduate student, and Thomas Batterman, a war crimes investigator at the Department of Justice, as Georgetown’s 2024 Rhodes recipients.
They join the ranks of more than 30 Georgetown students and alumni who have received the scholarship, including 2021 recipient and fellow GU-Q student, Khansa Maria and former US president, Bill Clinton. The scholarship selects promising young people from around the world who demonstrate integrity, leadership, character, intellect and a commitment to service to study at the University of Oxford.
“This is a wonderful recognition of Asma and her academic contributions. On behalf of our community, I offer my most sincere congratulations on this terrific achievement,” said Georgetown president John J DeGioia. “Asma has shown a deep dedication to the study of history and how it informs our present. She has illuminated new perspectives on the past and ways to make it more accessible. We look forward to the impact she will have on our global community.”
Asma will pursue her master’s in global and imperial history and a PhD in history at the University of Oxford. While there, she hopes to use archives from British missionaries in South Asia to better understand the history of Kashmir, a Himalayan region in the Indian subcontinent where she grew up. Shakeel hopes to create a digital archive that chronicles Kashmir’s history, so that generations of Kashmiris can access, contribute to, and understand their history.
Safwan Masri, dean of GU-Q and Distinguished Professor of the Practice in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, said: “Winning the 2024 Rhodes Scholarship is a testimony to her sharp intellect and dedication, while also reflecting positively on the faculty whose wise and sustained mentorship guided Asma in her groundbreaking research on Kashmir’s history.”
Asma Shakeel
