Human Rights Minor Kyra Jasper wins Marshall Scholarship

Stanford Human Rights Minor, Kyra Jasper, has been named a 2023 Marshall Scholar and will be pursuing her graduate studies at the University of London and the London School of Economics. The Marshall Scholarship offers financial support to students wishing to pursue a degree in the United Kingdom with up to fifty scholars selected each year to study at the graduate level in any field of study.

Kyra has dedicated her time at Stanford to studying issues of transitional justice and international human rights. As a human rights summer fellow in 2022, Kyra interned for the Indonesian Institute for an Independent Judiciary (LeIP), researching Indonesia’s blasphemy and freedom of expression laws, and later working with the core team on their research project titled “Application of International Criminal Law Doctrines and Best Practices to Gross Human Rights Violations Cases under Investigation by the Indonesian Attorney General’s Office.” This critical international human rights work has built the foundation for her Senior thesis investigating the history of Indonesia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) law that has been heavily debated in the Constitutional Courts in Indonesia over the past two decades.

For her human rights capstone project, Kyra conducted virtual field and in-depth independent research on two significant cases, the May 1998 riots and forced disappearance of students from 1997-1998, as well as the Wasior and Wamena cases in Papua, that were presented to the Indonesian Attorney General's Office in the efforts to create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and remedy past human rights violations. Inspired by her research on Indonesian and Southeast Asian governments, Kyra also founded the Stanford Southeast Asia Forum, which is one of the first undergraduate student organizations focused on discussing and engaging with Southeast Asia in the United States.

As a Marshall Scholar, Kyra will pursue an MA in international law at the University of London SOAS and an MSc in international and Asian history at the London School of Economics (LSE). She hopes her graduate studies will support her long-term goal of becoming a scholar in Southeast Asian legal history.

Special thanks to the Stanford Report for content for this news item.