News and blogs

Debating combines critical thinking, planning, research, strategising and effective presentation skills, while encouraging a healthy questioning attitude. It calls into play the ability to articulate your thoughts while thinking on your feet and keeping your personal emotions in check. This makes it a powerful skill to have in both personal and professional situations, across fields. […]

In celebration of its 35th anniversary, the Chevening Secretariat and British Embassy San José hosted our largest regional conference to date. The conference brought together Chevening officers from across the Americas, British Overseas Territories, and the Caribbean to network, learn, and exchange ideas. Now in its second series, the regional conference is a way to […]

Scholars were urged to aid the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s media freedom campaign at the sixth annual Chevening Conference hosted at the University of Manchester on Friday, 12 April. 2018 was the deadliest year on record for journalists worldwide. Alastair King-Smith, Deputy Director of the Multilateral Policy Directorate at the FCO, encouraged scholars to help […]

Completely immersing yourself in a language is often the best way to learn. Yosea Kurnianto talks about his experience developing his English language skills in the UK.

How Victorians design designed a breakthrough sewage system On 19 March a group of Chevening Scholars travelled to east London to unravel the history of Crossness Pumping Station, one of the oldest of its kind in the UK. A magnificently decorated brick building was the first thing that struck us with its beauty and elaborate […]

The clocks in the UK have now gone forward by an hour which means we are officially in British Summer Time (BST is GMT+1) and that means, an extra hour of glorious sunlight to bask in each day. Yay! With that, we thought it would be good to further celebrate the lovely sunrises/sunsets that scholars […]

On Monday, 18 March Chevening Scholars visited Stratford-upon-Avon to learn about the life and works of renowned English writer William Shakespeare. Below are five interesting things we learnt during the trip. Anne Hathaway’s cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon 1) Love-life William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway (26) when he was 18, in 1582. It was in the house […]

London and the South East The Boat Race Sunday, 7 AprilRiver Thames, London Watch the historic Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, which has taken place annually since 1829. The race is a contest between rowing crews from Oxford and Cambridge Universities and takes place on the River Thames in south-west London between Putney and Mortlake.  More information  […]

Who shapes knowledge? How can I make the internet a better place? A group of Chevening Scholars delved into these questions during a Wikithon at the Wellcome Library. Led by the Wellcome Collection’s digital editors and a Wikipedia representative,  the session taught us  how to create and edit Wikipedia pages and, what is more, opened […]

A newly discovered octopus species, found off the coast of South Korea, has been named after the Chevening Scholarships programme by the scientist who found it. South Korean Chevening Alumna Dr Aprille Phul decided to give the new octopus the Latin scientific name of Octopoda Chevenuss Scholarpod after spending a career-changing year studying in the […]