The Gates Cambridge Trust has announced the complete Class of 2022, made up of 79 outstanding new scholars.
We are delighted to announce that Ms Waruguru Gaitho, PhD in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies, has been awarded a Gates International Scholarship for 2022-23 and we send our warmest congratulations to Waruguru on this great achievement.
- Scholar-elect
- Kenya
- 2022 PhD Multi-disciplinary Gender Studies
- Selwyn College
"As a human rights lawyer focused on SOGIESC (sexual orientation, gender identity, expression and sex characteristics), race and gender, I am invariably interested in the ways in which law, society and these identity categories intersect. My time working on LGBTQIA+ legal and social advocacy in Kenya, where same sex relations still carry a 14-year penalty, and my academic exploration of sexual violence against queer women in South Africa during my LLM at Leiden University, brought to the fore the urgent need for multi-faceted strategies in tackling complex socio-legal challenges. Accordingly, my doctoral research applies a transdisciplinary approach to examine how, why, and with what impact Black lesbian bisexual and queer womxn mobilize law to protect their rights and advance social change in Kenya and South Africa. By studying how we translate ideas of political and personal identity, human rights, social advocacy and legal mobilization into specific strategies, I hope to expatiate intersectionality as lens, epistemology, method, and action. In particular, how individuals at the nexus of intersecting vulnerabilities navigate systems of oppression at the practical level and articulate their demands both before the law and society.”
Previous Education
Black Europe Summer School Citizenship, Race & Ethnicity 2021
Rijksuniversiteit Leiden (Leiden Univ) Human Rights Law 2020
