Alix de Saint-Aignan, a Carolina senior and captain of the women’s varsity rowing team, was selected as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. De Saint-Aignan is double-majoring in political science and peace, war and defense in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences.
Alix de Saint-Aignan, a Carolina senior and captain of the women’s varsity rowing team, was selected as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. She is Carolina’s 11th Gates Cambridge scholar and the first since 2020. At the University of Cambridge in England, she will study for a Master of Philosophy in global risk and resilience.
“Being selected as a Gates Cambridge Scholar is incredibly meaningful to me, especially because I know how many people at Carolina made this possible,” said de Saint-Aignan. “My teammates, my coaches, my professors and the mentors all invested in me long before I knew this award existed.”
De Saint-Aignan is double-majoring in political science and peace, war and defense in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences. An emerging expert on counterterrorism, she has worked at the United States National Counterterrorism Center and works professionally as a designer of national security simulations. She is a Buckley Public Service scholar and serves as managing editor of the Journal of Foreign Affairs at Carolina, where she has helped cultivate a vibrant intellectual community for students engaged in global policy and international security.
Her senior honors thesis in peace, war and defense examines counterterrorism efforts in metropolitan Paris. “Her honors thesis on counterterrorism in France stands out as one of the finest I have supervised,” said professor Navin Bapat, chair of the political science department. The paper “makes the kind of connections that are difficult even for advanced scholars, and yet Alix approaches the challenge with creativity, rigor and a genuine willingness to think beyond conventional boundaries.”
As a Tar Heel athlete, de Saint-Aignan is the first coxswain to be elected team captain and has participated in multiple ACC finals, including two first-place finishes in the varsity eight petite final. She has trained with both the U.S. and French national team rowing programs. She is a multiyear member of the All-ACC Academic Team.
“Carolina took a chance on me as both a scholar and a coxswain,” said de Saint-Aignan. “To now represent UNC on an international stage feels deeply personal. This recognition belongs to a community that taught me that scholarship should serve something larger than yourself.”
The Gates Cambridge Scholarship was founded in 2000 with a donation from the Gates Foundation to fully fund graduate education at the University of Cambridge for individuals demonstrating exceptional promise in academics and leadership with the goal of improving lives around the world. The scholarship is extremely competitive with fewer than 1% of applicants being selected. The Office of Distinguished Scholarships in Honors Carolina supports Tar Heels applying to the Gates Cambridge Scholarship and other nationally competitive awards.
By Marc Howlett, Office of Distinguished Scholarships