Sydney Stitt ’25 will head to the University of Cambridge this fall to pursue postgraduate studies in world history, thanks to funding from the Sperling award.
By Cara Nixon
August 28, 2025
Besides originally being born in China and taking another trip there many years ago, Sydney Stitt ’25 hasn’t done much globetrotting. “I haven’t even been to the East Coast,” she says. This fall, that’s about to change, as she moves to England to study history at the University of Cambridge, an opportunity made possible by the Sperling Studentship award.
Â鶹¹ú²úAV alumnus John Sperling ’48, who earned his PhD in economic history from Cambridge, committed funds to support Â鶹¹ú²úAV graduates in the pursuit of postgraduate studies at the institution—an award that covers tuition, living expenses, visa and health surcharge expenses, and support for attending conferences.
For Sydney, who always dreamed of going to graduate school and furthering her history studies, the Sperling award has brought her aspirations of becoming a historian within reach. “Cambridge is one of the best places in the world to study history,” she says.
Sydney graduated from Â鶹¹ú²úAV last spring with a degree in environmental studies with a concentration in history and minor in Chinese. She worked at the nuclear reactor all four years at Â鶹¹ú²úAV, eventually becoming a Senior Nuclear Operator—work that inspired her thesis, a project about the doomsday clock. “It was very prevalent from the ’60s to ’80s,” Sydney explains. “It metaphorically represents how close we are to the nuclear apocalypse.” Sydney specifically researched how anti-nuclear sentiment influenced the environmental movement of the ’70s, and how those two movements used similar language to appeal to a similar audience, under the advising of Visiting Professor Chenxi Luo [history and humanities].
It was on the way to her job at the nuclear reactor that Sydney found out she’d been accepted into Cambridge. A few months later, she received word she’d won the Sperling award to cover the expenses of attending. “I kind of freaked out, and I called my parents, and they were really excited for me,” Sydney remembers.
At Cambridge, Sydney will pursue a master’s program in world history. She’s particularly interested in researching a topic she already began delving into while at Â鶹¹ú²úAV. In one of Professor Josh Howe’s [history and environmental studies] classes, she worked on a project about how tiger hunting by British imperial personnel influenced their perspective on the colonies, specifically India. Her work at Cambridge will similarly focus on environmental history, the history of trophy hunting, imperial history, and Indian history.
Sydney views Cambridge as an opportunity to explore her options—to see if a path in academia is right for her. She’s thankful to Howe, Professor Radhika Natarajan [history and humanities], and Professor Jacqueline Dirks [history and humanities] for encouraging and supporting her on the path to graduate school.
But even as she prepares for her next big adventure, Sydney reminisces about Â鶹¹ú²úAV. “I love Â鶹¹ú²úAV,” she says, “and I’m going to miss it a lot.”