Recent alum claims award to help fund graduate school in England
The Office of Fellowships is excited to announce that Daniel Wolf (WCAS ’25) has been chosen as the 2025 recipient of the Roger Boye Oxbridge Bursary! With the award’s support, Daniel will travel to England where he will earn a master’s degree at the University of Cambridge.
At Northwestern, Daniel majored in history and political science and minored in legal studies and film and media studies. These interdisciplinary interests culminated in his honors thesis, a study of the American anarchist and 
physician Ben Reitman. As a graduate student in Cambridge, Daniel will earn an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History that will build upon his undergraduate research.
Before completing his honors thesis, Daniel served as a research assistant to Crown Family Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of History Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern through the Leopold Fellowship. Daniel’s work began with supporting Dr. Petrovsky-Shtern on his forthcoming book about the history of laughter in the arts. Daniel examined secondary sources on humor in early modern literature, including works on such writers as Rabelais and de Navarre; later, he analyzed humor in Persian Letters and then spent over a year combing through James Joyce’s personal letters and a couple of chapters of Ulysses to help with Dr. Petrovsky-Shtern’s chapter on the novel’s Ithaca section.
Daniel also served as a research assistant for Clinical Professor of Law Julie Biehl on her study of public defense in Illinois, building toward his goal to attend law school after completing his MPhil at Cambridge. For Professor Biehl, Daniel analyzed data from every Illinois county to create infographics and memos illustrating the inadequacy of the state’s oversight for public defenders. His work contributed to the creation of a website that in turn contributed to the passage of the FAIR Act in June, establishing the first statewide Public Defender’s Office in Illinois.
Outside of his coursework and research, Daniel interned at Holland & Knight LLP and San Diego Gas & Electric, where he attended congressional hearings, monitored developments in areas like Native American affairs and energy policy, and wrote memos detailing the implications of public policy issues. On campus, Daniel co-founded the Northwestern Cinematheque film club, which held a Q&A with director Jane Schoenbrun in 2023. He was also chair for various Model UN committees during Northwestern’s annual MUN conference.
The Boye Oxbridge Bursary was first offered in 2008. Northwestern alums who had worked with Medill Associate Professor Emeritus-in-Service Roger Boye through his tenure as chair of the British Scholarship Committee in the Office of Fellowships sought to honor his unstinting support with an award for a similarly devoted Wildcat embarking on graduate study at the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge.
Daniel is the seventeenth recipient of the Boye Bursary and will receive over $4000 toward his school expenses.
Contact Elizabeth Lewis Pardoe at e-pardoe@northwestern.edu to learn more about the Boye Oxbridge Bursary.