I studied at Oxford as an Ertegun Scholar in 2013-2015, completing my M.Phil in Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics. My Masters work at Oxford focused on the semantic component of our language abilities - how we extract representations of meaning from strings of natural language, and produce language with particular meanings in mind.
The Ertegun Scholarship provided ideal conditions in which to undertake the studies that prepared me to enter a PhD program. Besides the obvious financial benefits, the social and work space in Ertegun House greatly faciliated studying and helped develop personally and academically valuable relationships with other Ertegun Scholars. Many academic conferences take place throughout the year at Ertegun House, and there is much support for scholar-run conferences and events.
While at Oxford, I co-organized a conference on The Humanities in the 21st Century at Ertegun House, an event made possible by the space, funding, administrative aid, and interdisciplinary atmosphere provided by the Ertegun Program. You can learn more about me and my research at my website, http://pages.jh.edu/~mlaliss1/. Feel free to contact me at lalisse, that funny "at" symbol, then .jhu.edu with any questions about Ertegun, or if we have any interests in common.