Victoria graduate awarded Woolf Fisher Scholarship

A Victoria University graduate is off to Cambridge next year after winning a prestigious scholarship.

Matthew Castle was one of three New Zealand tertiary students awarded a Woolf Fisher Scholarship last week, enabling him to commence studies at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom in 2012.

At Cambridge, the 24-year-old international relations Masters graduate will set out to understand the economic and political forces driving integration in South East Asia, and how relations with other countries such as New Zealand, Australia and the EU have impacted on that process.

"If we can understand the impact of trade and other relations between regions, we are better placed to anticipate the process of regional integration. My research will compare ASEAN's relationships with other regions, including with New Zealand and Australia. I hope this will have a tangible application for policy making and can also be applied to the private sector," says Mr Castle.

"The New Zealand and Australian relationship is an under-researched subject and I'm looking forward to exploring how it’s had an impact in the wider region."

When he's not hard at the books, Mr Castle enjoys the great outdoors, keeps fit at the gym and participates in drama, including recently playing the lead role in Victoria University's French Club play.

Fluent in French, Mr Castle spent his sixth form year on exchange in the South of France, followed by another year in Lyon during the second year of his tertiary studies. He has recently returned from a six month internship at the Asia Europe Foundation in Singapore.

While he enjoys travel and is looking forward to learning from different minds and being exposed to new ideas, Mr Castle says ultimately he intends to return New Zealand to work and share his knowledge with fellow Kiwis.

The Woolf Fisher Trust offers up to three scholarships each year tenable at the University of Cambridge, for three or four years of postgraduate research leading to a doctoral degree.

The scholarships will be taken up in October 2012 and provide each recipient with full college and university fees and a living allowance. The annual value of each scholarship is close to $100,000.

The scholars were shortlisted, interviewed and selected by the trustees of the Woolf Fisher Trust, for their outstanding academic abilities and potential leadership. They possess many of the qualities admired by the late Sir Woolf Fisher, co-founder of Fisher and Paykel: integrity, leadership, boldness of vision and exceptional zeal, keenness and capacity for work.

The Trustees hope that the Woolf Fisher Scholars will make a long-term commitment to New Zealand and that they will become leaders in their fields.

The Woolf Fisher Trust invests almost $1 million each year in their scholarship programme, with 11 New Zealanders currently studying at either the University of Oxford or Cambridge.