Congratulations to Saksham Sharda who left the school in 2009 from Oberoi House. He studied English at (University of Delhi), and then an MA in English (2012-14) from the Faculty of Arts (University of Delhi).

This was what he says about the process: ‘In the second year of my MA (in 2013, that is) I applied for this fellowship. There was an interview and everything and I was nominated by the Canterbury-Prague-Porto-Berlin university-consortium interview committee in Jan 2014. The European Union’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) confirmed the nomination quite recently which did come as a surprise because I’m probably like the youngest person on their list (two of the other candidates are married!) and I never ever expected to win this at all (they take just 4 people in the entire world, and 2 from within the EU for this course…I mean I even kept a JNU MPhil-PhD in Cinema Studies offer as a back-up in case I got rejected by the EACEA). So it’s basically an European Joint Doctorate (EPJD) which will be awarded to me in 3 years by the EACEA and jointly by the Canterbury-Prague-Porto-Berlin University Consortium, and be fully-funded by their Erasmus MundusFellowship. During the course of this joint doctorate I will get a 6 month work placement either at Shakespeare’s Globe theater or any similar socio-culture institution in Prague. Finally the EACEA is paying for everything…insurance, tuition, travel-costs between Universities in Prague-Porto-Canterbury-Berlin, living-costs, potential “paternity leaves” and there’s even some “pension fund”.