Sheyann McPherson (A&S ’20) Receives Barry Scholarship to Oxford

Sheyann McPherson, who studied history and English literature in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and graduated from Pitt in December, has been awarded a Barry Scholarship to pursue the MPhil in Modern European History at Oxford University.

A member of the Bruderhof, a pacifist Christian minority group, McPherson studies modern European history to understand the dynamics of hate and reconciliation, exile and hospitality, and individualism and community.

Motivated by the group’s experience of marginalization and displacement—first by the Nazis, then by England, then by Paraguay to the US—McPherson’s academic pursuits extend past traditional research into poetry, multimedia, theater and journalism.

The Barry Scholarship is awarded in recognition of students’ dedication to the academic vocation and pursuit of truth, and provides full funding for a minimum of two years at Oxford. Funded by the John and Daria Barry Foundation, the scholarship is an initiative of the Canterbury Institute, an Oxford-based charity that seeks to rediscover the academic vocation.