Scholar Stories
A timely and affirming gift
Applications for the 2025 Shaun Johnson Memorial Scholarship (SJMS) has opened. Established in 2016, the SJMS - named in honour of founding MRF CEO Shaun Johnson - is an exclusive opportunity for Mandela Rhodes alumni wishing to pursue doctoral study in the UK. The MRF recently reflected with 2022 SJMS winner Gideon Basson (South Africa & University of Stellenbosch, 2020) on how it felt to be awarded this prestigious Scholarship, its deepened academic purpose and tips for future applicants.
A timely and affirming gift
Receiving the Shaun Johnson Memorial Scholarship (SJMS) has been a profoundly affirming gift, both personally and professionally. It came at a pivotal time, as I was navigating the prospects of doctoral research. The SJMS reminded me that there is a community of thinkers and doers who believe in the value of critical, decolonial, and transformative scholarship - especially the kind that does not always follow conventional academic pathways or frameworks.
A moment of recognition
On a personal level, the Scholarship represented a moment of recognition that I had not fully anticipated. Shaun Johnson’s legacy - his commitment to writing new worlds before they came into being, and his deep commitment to the continent - resonates with many of the questions I continue to ask in my work. To be named one of the first recipients of a Scholarship bearing Shaun’s legacy was not only an honour but also a quiet nudge to continue asking difficult questions while beginning, however tentatively, to answer them. The SJMS offers me both the chance and the challenge to spend sustained deep-time in research, to subject my own work to critique, and to give it enough practical purchase and theoretical flexibility for others to take it further, complicate, refine or reject.
Deepening academic purpose and responsibility
The SJMS has influenced my academic work in more subtle but significant ways. It has emboldened me to bring more of myself into my Scholarship. The SJMS has also fostered a deeper sense of responsibility to broaden the possible paths for those who come after me, to support others in navigating institutions that weren’t built with all of us in mind, to resist easy answers and engage complexity with precision and openness, and to use words (and their limits) in writing towards possible impossibilities.
Tips for applicants
To future applicants, I would say: don’t be afraid to show how your work matters - not just in disciplinary terms, but also in its real-life application. The SJMS is not merely about academic excellence; it’s about a kind of enquiry that is open to unknowing and unafraid of complexity. Let your application reflect the questions that keep you up at night, the communities you care about, and the future-now you want to help build. Some tips:
(1) dream expansively yet realistically about your research; (2) find your voice as you search for answers; (3) read widely and write constantly (reading is breathing in, and writing is breathing out); and (4) having supportive supervisors is non-negotiable.Gratitude
I remain deeply grateful to the Mandela Rhodes Foundation for the support in pursuing my DPhil (Law) at the University of Oxford. The SJMS is more than a Scholarship - it is a quiet but enduring call to stay rooted, critical, and restlessly hopeful, and see what we can think and write about to make our worlds otherwise.
Find out more about the SJMS here. You can also find out more on Gideon’s PhD research on pages 52 and 53 of the 2024 Mandela Rhodes Foundation yearbook.
