UT’s Ninth Rhodes Scholar

Hera Jay Brown, who graduated from UT in 2018, was named a 2020 Rhodes Scholar—the ninth current or former UT student to earn this prestigious honor.

The Corryton, Tennessee, native will begin all-expenses-paid studies at the University of Oxford in England in the fall. Brown tentatively plans to pursue both a master’s degree and a doctorate in migration studies.

“Having a Rhodes Scholar for a second consecutive year is a tremendous honor that underscores our university’s commitment to excellence in undergraduate scholarship, research, and engagement,” Chancellor Donde Plowman said. “Hera Jay has spent her academic and professional career researching important, and sometimes difficult, topics. She wants to make a difference in the world by informing international policy and decision making.”

Brown came to UT as part of the university’s premier honors program, the Haslam Scholars.

The third Haslam Scholar to be named a Rhodes Scholar, she already has a lengthy resume of scholarship and service.

At UT, she was in the College Scholars Program, a College of Arts and Sciences honors program that allows students to design their own interdisciplinary major. Working with Tricia Hepner, associate professor of anthropology, Brown pursued a course of study in sociocultural anthropology and migration studies, centered on research and engagement with forced migrant populations around the globe.

Brown was editor of Pursuit, UT’s journal of undergraduate research, in 2017–18. Her own undergraduate research focused
on understanding the experience of Syrian refugee workers in special economic zones and in urban life, and included fieldwork in Jordan, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Brown was also a Baker Scholar at UT’s Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy. On campus, she starred in a shadow cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and was an executive board member of Sexual Empowerment and Awareness in Tennessee.

After graduating from UT, Brown spent three months as the LGBTQ+ policy intern for former vice president Joe Biden’s DC-based foundation and then five months in Egypt as a presidential associate at the American University in Cairo. She returned to the United States in February 2019 to work as a site coordinator with Catholic Charities’ Refugee Youth Program in Nashville.

Since September 2019, Brown has been a Fulbright-Schuman Research Fellow through a grant jointly funded by the US Department of State and the European Commission. Through the fellowship, Brown is completing a research project on citizenship by investment across Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Malta, and Lithuania.

“Through the Rhodes I have a real chance here to bolster partnerships I’ve built with refugee communities in the United States and abroad. I’m beyond excited to be a part of that necessary work and honored to learn with and from my new Rhodes community.”

According to the Rhodes Trust, Brown is the first transgender woman to be elected to a Rhodes Scholarship, an experience she describes as deeply meaningful.

Following her graduate studies at Oxford, Brown plans to pursue a law degree in the United States and eventually start a law firm that provides specialized legal counsel to asylum seekers as both a regional and cultural expert and legal advocate.

Andrew Seidler, director of UT’s Office of National Scholarships and Fellowships, which facilitates nomination of UT candidates for nationally competitive awards, said Brown is richly deserving of a Rhodes.

“I first met Hera in fall 2015, and she just bowled me over with her seriousness of purpose but also her warmth and quirky sense of humor,” Seidler said. “Since then she has only become more determined, more knowledgeable, more capable of being a force for good in the world. What an outstanding success story hers is.”