Cécile Parrish Memorial Scholarship for Graduate Research in English
The Cécile Parrish Memorial Scholarship for Research Excellence is awarded by the Cécile Parrish Memorial Fund. The fund was established by the trustees of the late Renée Parrish of Singapore in commemoration of her daughter Cécile, a sometime member of staff in the Department of English, Monash University. The fund is administered by Monash University and provides scholarships for the study of English Literature at Monash University.
The scholarship is awarded annually to enable Masters or PhD scholars to pursue a full-time program of graduate research in the field of English literature. The fund is awarded on the basis of outstanding merit complemented by a background in a relevant Humanities discipline. The scholarship is awarded by the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies and selected from a short list of applications.
How to apply for the Cécile Parrish Memorial Scholarship for Research Excellence
Cécile Parrish biography
Cécile Parrish (1938-1965) was the only child of Edward Ivor and Renée Parrish. She was appointed to a lectureship in English at Monash University in 1964, after teaching for a time at the University of Malaya (1962).
Born in Malacca and educated at the University of St Andrews (1956-60) and at Moray House College of Education, Edinburgh (1960-61), her teaching and research interests included nineteenth and twentieth-century literary criticism, the contemporary novel, and literature from the early modern period. She passed the qualifying examination in French and Bibliography and completed early research for her MA thesis topic on the image of Asia in children’s literature since 1815. A draft of some of this work was published as a commemorative volume by the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University in August, 1977 with a Foreword by David Bradley.
Parrish published a translation from French in South-East Asian Studies (OUP, 1963), won a prize for her short story The Bird with the Glittering Tail, (1963) and had a short story, A Malacca Christmas, broadcast by Radio Malaysia. She was also a reporter and reviewer for the Straits Times.
At the age of 27, at a time in her life full of personal and professional promise, she died with her fiancé, in a car accident on her way to Canberra (15 April 1965). Renée Parrish established two separate funds in her daughter’s memory. For many years, English students at Monash University have been provided with much needed financial assistance for a range of academic activities, including field work, travel, conference attendance, and on some occasions simple subsistence. The second, the Cecile Parrish Memorial Fund, was established in May 2006 in an extraordinary act of generosity, providing for scholarships for the study of English literature at Monash University.