Three Harvard students named Marshall Scholars

Three Harvard students will take their passions for journalism, health equity, and education equity to the United Kingdom next year as members of the 2025 Marshall Class. Ryan Doan-Nguyen, John Lin, and Laila Nasher are among 36 students nationwide to receive 2025 Marshall Scholarships, which support two years of study at a U.K. college or university.

Ryan Doan-Nguyen
Joint concentration in History & Literature and Government, with a secondary in Ethnicity, Migration, Rights

Doan-Nguyen ’25, of Westborough, Massachusetts, strives to bridge research, writing, and advocacy in journalism and history. Having grown up listening to his family’s stories about fleeing the Vietnam War as refugees, he is passionate about amplifying marginalized voices in his work. His senior thesis includes oral history interviews with 40 Vietnamese refugees impacted by imperialism.

“There’s so much knowledge and innovation and ways of thought and approaching the world that are excluded because of the way in which we value certain voices more than others,” Doan-Nguyen said. “I’m trying to help break that down in the work that I do.”

The night the Mather House resident learned that he had been named a Marshall Scholar, he ran straight to his roommate to share the good news. Then he called his family and his closest mentors.

“It’s the chance of a lifetime, and I did not expect to receive it in the slightest,” Doan-Nguyen said. “I just remember receiving the call and being so overwhelmed with gratitude.”

Doan-Nguyen is a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellow, an editor for The Harvard Crimson, and co-founder of a Harvard chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association. He served previously on the JFK Jr. Forum Committee at Harvard Kennedy School and on the board of the Harvard Vietnamese Association.

Doan-Nguyen plans to attend the University of Oxford, where he will study global and imperial history the first year and U.S. history the second year.