University of Chicago fourth-year student Elena Tiedens and alum Erica Hogan, AB’23, have earned Gates Cambridge Scholarships in 2025 and will pursue master’s degrees at the University of Cambridge this fall. They are two of the U.S. recipients of the prestigious scholarship, which aims to build a global network of future leaders committed to improving the lives of others.
Elena Tiedens
Elena Tiedens always knew that she wanted to be a history major.
“I believe that understanding our past is essential to negotiating our collective future,” she said.
She is on track to earn her bachelor’s degree in June with a focus on environmental history, and a minor in Russian and Eastern European Studies. Her studies at UChicago have built a foundation on which her post-graduate work will be based.
“From early on in my time at UChicago, I gravitated towards environmental history and then energy history because of the urgency of the climate crisis,” said Tiedens. “This type of history is essential to understanding our dependence on fossil fuels and the global climate crisis.”
Elena Tiedens
Throughout the course of her studies, she began to focus on the Russian and transnational Arctics, going so far as to begin her study of two different languages (Russian and Norwegian) to deepen her understanding of both the region and the history of how nuclear energy has been used in unconventional ways.
“I became fascinated by the dynamics of nuclear-powered icebreaker boats and earned the Straetz International Research Grant to conduct archival and oral historical research in Oslo and northern Norway,” she said.
Tiedens’ research aims to show how infrastructure evolves over time and how old technology and methods can be used to accomplish new goals. To demonstrate this point, she explained that Soviet-era nuclear icebreakers now serve the region in new ways—ranging from luxury tourism to transporting oil and gas.
Elizabeth Chatterjee, Assistant Professor of Environmental History and the College, knows that this is just the beginning of Tiedens journey and that the opportunity the scholarship will give her is something she has rightfully earned.
“Whether interviewing exiled Russian environmentalists or working to improve campus sustainability, Elena stands out for the imagination, grit, and deep moral principle with which she approaches the huge environmental problems our planet faces today,” said Chatterjee. “She is already emerging as one of the world’s most exciting young scholars of environmental change in the Arctic, as this richly deserved honor recognizes.”
The Gates Cambridge Scholarship will allow her to continue her studies thanks to Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), which is one of the only dedicated educational facilities with a focus on the study of the polar regions.
“I know my project will continue to grow in new, exciting directions at SPRI,” said Tiedens. “I’m looking forward to learning from the incredible faculty and students at Cambridge.”
At SPRI, Tiedens plans to expand her current research on the post-Soviet Arctic and is excited to learn about the broader histories and cultures of the region.
“I seek to understand how this energy and infrastructural transition impacted the broader Arctic region and simultaneously laid bare patterns of infrastructural use and reuse across the world,” she said. “Through my graduate work at Cambridge, I also look forward to the opportunity to conduct more research, both archival and oral historical, in Arctic countries and would love the opportunity to return to Norway and visit the Finnish far north to understand local perspectives on Arctic infrastructure.”
Erica Hogan
The University of Cambridge offers something unique for College graduate Erica Hogan.
A native of Tokyo, Japan, Hogan majored in Economics and Fundamentals: Issues and Texts before graduating from the College in 2023. Through the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, she hopes to explore how global political and economic inequality is generated and shapes the lives of those in low and middle income countries. She will study for an MPhil in Development Studies and intends to pursue a Ph.D.
“My Fundamentals junior paper studied this question through an examination of Kwame Nkrumah’s writing on how to move Ghana and Africa past colonialism,” said Hogan. “I was interested both in how the colonial system of government and economic institutions shaped the lives of Ghanaians, and the possibilities available to Ghanaians of remaking those institutions.”
Erica Hogan
Prior to coming to the College, Hogan spent several months in Zambia and left wanting to understand why Zambia, along with neighboring countries Zimbabwe and Botswana, had taken such different economic paths after the end of colonization. She initially considered pursuing a Ph.D. in Economics, but the Core curriculum opened up another path that allowed her to build off her interests, one that would ultimately lead her to the interdisciplinary field of development studies.
“I realized while taking a social sciences core class during my first year that I was thinking about many of the same questions that motivated my interest in economics, just with a different methodological toolkit,” she said. “Even as I progressed in my economics training, I kept taking political theory classes, inspired by the social sciences core, and reading those types of books just for fun, which led to me doing the Fundamentals major. The Core allowed me to explore a variety of disciplines, which showed me how an interdisciplinary approach can lead to novel insights.”
Daragh Grant, senior lecturer in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division, said Hogan took advantage of the Core curriculum to further her search for knowledge and understanding.
“Erica used the Core to rediscover her passion for mathematics and to lay a foundation in the classics of social and political thought that attuned her to the powerful voices that spoke from the margins of that tradition,” said Grant. “Rather than hold her interests side-by-side, Erica continually brought them to bear upon one another. I am delighted that she will have the opportunity to use her Gates Cambridge Scholarship to continue to work toward a just, equitable and reparatory model of development for the African continent.”
Since graduating from UChicago, Hogan has been working as a James C. Gaither Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a position that the College Center for Research and Fellowships (CCRF) helped her secure through the Carnegie Endowment’s Junior Fellows program. Since starting there in September 2023, she has authored or co-authored several papers on topics such as the global sovereign debt crisis, post-colonial development policy and the impact on international trade policy on capital flows. Hogan also helped plan a conference on global economic governance reform, which included officials from the United Nations and the World Trade Organization.
The focus of Hogan’s studies at Cambridge will be Zambia’s negotiations with its creditors to restructure its Eurobonds. She hopes to use this as a case study for a broader project focusing on the role of American and English financial law in creating hierarchy in the international financial system.
Hogan said she hopes to take advantage of the unique opportunities that Cambridge will provide for her.
“I had come across the work of several scholars at Cambridge since I’ve been with the Carnegie Endowment, which led me to develop the research question I will pursue through my MPhil. I feel very fortunate that a scholarship like Gates Cambridge exists and that it will let me pursue graduate research while working with the very scholars that inspired the work I will be pursuing.”
Tiedens and Hogan were supported by the fellowships team at the College Center for Research and Fellowships (CCRF), which guides candidates through rigorous application processes and interview preparation for nationally competitive awards like Gates Cambridge. The CCRF team helps students identify and articulate how their unique talents and distinctive paths prepare them to realize a better world.
