Recently updated on October 24th, 2022 at 02:12 pm
Joshua Okyere, a PhD student at the University of Manitoba, has been named one of the winners of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholarship 2021.
Joshua Okyere represented the University of Manitoba, an institution in Western Canada, in the keen scholarship contest that had 643 entries from 13 universities all over the world.
A statement from the university news website states that Joshua’s feat makes him the third student in the institution’s history and the first person in the Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) program he is studying to record such.
The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholarship and Engaged Leadership program prepares doctoral candidates to lead the charge and make an impact on their communities and the world. Appointed Scholars receive funding as they continue to find success in their studies, professional development and beyond. Above all, Scholars will become a part of a community of distinguished leaders, providing a unique opportunity to enrich their skillset with guidance from the Foundation’s alumni network.
Dr. Kelly Main, an acting dean of the faculty of graduate studies of the university on Joshua’s achievement stated:
“I would like to congratulate Joshua for this impressive achievement, he has joined a group of emerging scholars across Canada and will benefit from this experience for the rest of his career. “The PACS program should also be proud of how their program has helped contribute to this success.”
According to a statement from the official website of the awarder of the scholarship:
“This remarkable group of 15 Scholars, representing 13 universities, were chosen based on their academic excellence, leadership and engagement, willingness to engage with a plurality of perspectives, and their agility and resilience. Diversity is especially well represented among the 15 Scholars, and a significant percentage of them are francophones. Of note, the group includes five Scholars hailing from leading international universities, in addition to those studying in universities across Canada”
In the words of Pascale Fournier, the Foundation’s President and CEO:
“Our selection process is designed to unearth a different kind of academic leader,” said “Candidates are assessed not only on their academic abilities, but also their curiosity, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, resilience, and their interest in and willingness to engage with a range of different opinions and perspectives.”
Joshua Okyere is a PhD student in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Manitoba. His research interest spans across young people affected by violence, conflict and peacebuilding in Africa, conflict and gender, using emancipatory peacebuilding approaches to foster sustainable peace.
For his thesis, he seeks to delve deeper into the entrenched social and institutionalized cultural practices that enable violence against children, especially in Africa, to be able to devise suitable interventions against such violence using the frameworks of peacebuilding.
He obtained his Master’s Degree in International Studies from Ohio University and his undergraduate degree in Political Studies from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana. He is currently a volunteer at the Newcomer Ethnocultural Youth Council of Winnipeg and an associate member of the Pan-African Scientific Research Council.
