Banda and Beauchamp awarded prestigious Trudeau Scholarships

The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation recently awarded $150,000 prizes to Harvard doctoral students Maria Banda and Jonathan Beauchamp. Banda, a Harvard Law School student, and Beauchamp, a student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, joined 13 other students from American and Canadian universities to receive the scholarships, which represent the largest for doctoral work in the social sciences and humanities in Canada.

The annual $50,000 bursaries subsidize tuition fees and living expenses and allow the scholars to travel for research and scholarly networking. In addition to receiving financial support, Trudeau Scholars benefit from the expertise and knowledge of Trudeau Fellows and mentors, highly accomplished individuals in the Trudeau Foundation community who lead in both academic and nonacademic settings. Interaction with nonacademic milieus, including public policy networks and the public at large, is a key component of the Trudeau Scholars program.

Banda studies the evolution of state responsibility to protect civilian populations since the beginning of the “war on terror” to extract broader lessons for Canadian diplomacy. Beauchamp analyzes the impact of international trade on the spread of technology and expertise, and how this might advance Canada’s trade policies.

Since 2002, the foundation has granted nearly 150 major awards to top researchers and highly accomplished individuals, in Canada and abroad.