The Higher Education Scholarship

Maria Mironova

With a fierce passion for history and policy, Maria is a student who understands that to prepare for the future, we must first understand the past. A passionate researcher and woman of the world, Maria plans on pursuing a master’s in international relations after she completes her undergraduate degree. We look forward to seeing all that Maria accomplishes in her academic career and beyond.

Read Maria’s Essay:

Learning and research have been central to my life. I always wanted to understand the why and how of all that we discussed, and academic interests became intimately connected with my professional goals and me personally. Moreover, I am an immigrant, and have spent the last 6 years in a country originally foreign to me. Thrown in the middle of a politically strife world and not feeling completely at home in any part of it, I realized the extent to which the relationships between countries determine the lives of so many people within them. International affairs thus became near and dear to my heart, directly shaping my life and the life of humanity at large.

As I began paying closer attention to the way in which my history classes covered politics and daily conversation grew to encompass world events, I noticed that domestic and foreign policy are too often separated. To me, this is an error that makes understanding international relations infinitely harder. This put me on a path to pursue a degree in Political Science, minoring in European Studies and Math, studying foreign languages (Russian and French, Turkish and German more recently) in my free time, all with the goal of furthering my academic interests and making sense of the world.

I am most interested in post-Cold War European politics. This comes from a desire to understand the part of the world that I call home (Eastern Europe) and a region that endured significant change over the last few decades in every conceivable way overall. Although more than anything, I am interested in learning more about how Europe has changed since 1991, from the reinventing the political left to an emergence of neo-fascism to globalization and demographic crises, it is the emergence of new regional leaders, organizations, and allyships that intrigue me most and that I hope to pursue in a graduate setting.

After completing my undergraduate education, I plan to get a master's in international relations. Since I enjoy research, in the long term, I aspire to pursue a PhD or otherwise work in a research position (e.g. consulting, Government Relations, for an intergovernmental agency, or an NGO), helping find answers to some of the most urgent questions facing the world. As I discussed previously, dedicating time to academic research surrounding states' interactions is a deep-seated interest of mine; in fact, I am never happier than when faced with archives and journals, attempting to decipher the Mitterrand-Yeltsin relationship, for example. I hope, with sufficient schooling, I will be able to put my language and consensus-building skills to use and encourage a peaceful and rational approach to the study of world affairs through my work, or, if I occupy a consulting position, perhaps effect positive change in the world in whatever way I am able to.