Back in October it was announced that Rami Mhanna was a successful applicant of the Santander Scholarship. Each successful applicant was awarded up to £5,000 to travel to a university in the Santander Overseas Network to build or develop relationships.
As a PhD student in the School of Tourism Rami is interested in the planning requirements of major sporting events such as the London 2012, Sochi 2014 and the FIFA World cup in Brazil 2014. He therefore plans to travel to Universities in Russia, Brazil and London with his scholarship money.
As part of the Scholarship, Rami and other Santander Scholars got the opportunity to meet Lewis Hamilton and Jensen Button at the Royal Opera House in London on July 4th over a lunch meeting.
Rami and the other Santander Scholars got the chance to network as well as listen to speeches from Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button.
Lewis Hamilton told the group how when he was growing the type of opportunities that they had been given were from Santander were not available for him. Jenson Button continued by saying “We are here today because Santander chooses the best, and Santander chose you. This will help you really concentrate on what you want to achieve in the future”
Rami commented: “My PhD focuses on exploring stakeholders’ perceptions of leveraging legacy outcomes of different sized mega sport events and therefore my research requires travelling to three different host destinations in order to collect the required data for my PhD. I believe the importance of my research and the potential contribution of my PhD project helped me in getting the Santander Travel Grant.
I will use the travel grant to visit the 3 host destinations that host the forthcoming international sporting events: the London 2012 Summer Olympics, Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and the FIFA World Cup in Brazil 2014.
I will thank Santander for this grant as well The School of Tourism for the support they are offering in order to succeed my PhD.”
We will keep you updated on any news regarding Rami’s exciting trips and any more news from the Santander Scholarship programme.