Student Profiles

Matthew Burnard

I was admitted to Cambridge in October 2004 to study for a BA in Theological and Religious Studies. I was attracted to the degree by its flexibility and interdisciplinary nature.  However during my first year of study, I became particularly fascinated by my Qur'anic Arabic paper and my studies of Islam and realised I wanted to focus on Arabic and the Middle East. To switch into the second year of the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies course I had to make up the year of modern Arabic I'd missed. I did this partly through independent study and partly through winning a scholarship to study Arabic during the summer at the International Language Institute in Cairo.

Pursuing my increasing interest in the modern Middle East, the following summer I was accepted for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office's London Undergraduate Placement Scheme – a program for undergraduates seriously considering a career in the Diplomatic Service. I was placed in the Middle East and North Africa Division, and worked at the FCO in London and at the British Embassy in the United Arab Emirates. In London I met with senior British policy makers on the Middle East, and at the Embassy in Abu Dhabi I rotated around different departments, gaining an understanding of what policy made in London means in practice for the everyday workings of an Embassy in the Middle East.

I spent the 2006-07 academic year in Sana'a, Yemen, where I studied Arabic and undertook an internship with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The work primarily involved Somali refugees, and my main duties were to administer the registration of new refugees and co-ordinate voluntary repatriation to Somalia. All this has left me with an interest in refugee issues, both in more abstract academic terms but also with regard to the practical realities of life as a refugee in the Middle East.

Now in my final year, I have chosen to focus my research on modern Arabic poetry; during my time in Yemen the group of friends I fell in with would invite me to gatherings where they would recite to each other their favourite poems, old and new, and I became particularly interested in 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati, a modern Iraqi poet.  For my dissertation I’ll be comparing al-Bayati with Mahmud Darwish, the famous Palestinian poet, on their use of figures from Arab-Islamic history in their 'resistance poetry'.  I'm hoping that this topic will enable me to combine my enthusiasm for modern Arabic poetry with my interest in contemporary Arab history and politics. Apart from that, I’m taking papers on Human Rights issues in the Middle East, political Islam, and modern Turkish history, as well as Arabic language of course.

I hope all this will lead to a career in which I will develop an active engagement with the Middle East, building on the skills I have and hope to acquire in Arabic language and contemporary Middle Eastern politics. To this end I would explore options in the British Foreign Office, a UN body, and policy or humanitarian work.

Matthew Burnard, fourth year (2008)

Kathryn Schwartz

Studying in Cambridge has allowed me to specialize in Arabic and Middle Eastern studies at the undergraduate level, which is something that I would not have been able to do as intensely in America. While the program is really demanding, it is amazing to see how far we’ve all come over the past few years. Much of our progress is the result of having access to wonderful professors through small class sizes and supervisions. With a language as complex as Arabic is, I cannot imagine learning it any other way. 

The year abroad really helped me to be more at ease with Arabic, both in regard to my own confidence in speaking and in becoming a better listener. Cambridge is quite special in that it doesn't enforce many guidelines as to how the Arabists spend their year, and as a result people tend to have unique experiences.  I spent the majority of my time in Damascus, and two months at the end in Musqat. While there certainly was much adjusting to do at first, I really came to enjoy living in the Middle East and find myself quite sentimental when discussing the time that I spent there. Although improving language skills is certainly the major focus of the year, it is also a wonderful opportunity to travel within the region and to pursue academic interests that may not have been covered within the course syllabus. For example, I spent much of my time in Oman researching the history of the pearl trade along the Persian Gulf, the Jawasim pirates, and traditional Gulfi sailing techniques. 

I am just at the start of my fourth-year now, and while I have to admit that it is quite intense, it is really rewarding to study in classes that are more focused and specialized than those on offer in the first and second years. A major component of the work load for fourth year Arabists is the dissertation, which allows us to pursue a topic of our choice with the guidance of a faculty supervisor. The topic I am working with is Arab cryptology, or the science of code-breaking, between the 9th and 14th centuries. While the work has been slow-going, as the prospect of reading old and complicated Arabic texts is still quite daunting, the progress I've made on the project has been really gratifying so far. 

Kathryn Schwartz, fourth year (2008)