Yunbei Xu, a double major in Classics and Anthropology at the University of Arizona, is a 2021 recipient of the SILLC Global Award and a 2021 recipient of the College of Humanities Mary Ann Farman Memorial Scholarship.
The SILLC Global Award provides funding for study abroad and accepts applications every year from majors in Classics, Religious Studies, and other SILLC disciplines.
Yunbei Xu wrote the following about what the SILLC Global Award means to her:
“I am exceptionally thankful and honored to be one of the recipients of the SILLC Global Award. With this award, I will have this exciting opportunity to be an exchange student at the American University in Cairo in the fall. I will be taking courses in Egyptology with field trips to several archeological sites and museums in the city. In the final year of my archaeological sciences and classical civilization undergraduate programs, I am thrilled to immerse myself with the cultural heritage of the ancient Egyptian civilization, which I believe will deepen my understanding of the interregional interactions in the Bronze Age Aegean. I am also inquisitive about applying various archaeometric techniques in the paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the ancient Egyptian and Anatolian societies. I would like to utilize this experience to connect with local researchers working on this topic. As a Middle Eastern and North African Studies minor and nerdy polyglot, I also have interest in human migration in modern Arab states and plan to learn some basic colloquial Arabic while taking an introductory course in Hieroglyphics. All of this would not happen without the support from the SILLC Global Award Fund Committee, its donors, and the College of Humanities. I am truly grateful for all the help and advice received from the wonderful peers, advisors, administrative staff, and faculty members at the UA as I complete my educational goals at this challenging time. Thank you for offering me this blissful chance to study abroad, again, knowing that I am being supported by you all.”