Peter Quaranto, a University of Notre Dame senior from Franklin, Mass., is one of 43 Marshall Scholarship winners for 2006, the British government announced this week.He was chosen from among some 800 candidates to receive one of the most competitive and prestigious merit scholarships available to undergraduates.
The Marshall Scholarship allows students to attend any university in the United Kingdom for two or three years with all expenses paid.Quaranto plans to pursue a masters degree in international politics and security studies at the University of Bradford, where he will continue his research on contemporary peace and security dilemmas.
A political science major and peace studies minor, Quaranto is a Notre Dame Scholar, a National Merit Scholar semifinalist and a national Coca-Cola Scholar. He received the Yarrow Award for Undergraduate Peace Studies this year.
After studying in Uganda last spring semester, Quaranto founded the Uganda Conflict Action Network, an advocacy campaign working to end the two-decade war in that country. As director of the organization, Quaranto has served as a commentator on BBC Radio and Chicago Public Radio and published editorials in several newspapers, including the Daily Monitor in Uganda and the Daily Nation in Kenya.
His other community service includes an international summer service learning project last year in Cambodia, where he organized peace building workshops and documented stories of children with HIV/AIDS, and volunteering with My Brothers Keeper, a non-profit organization supporting poor urban families in Boston. Quaranto also served as student coordinator for Notre Dames Center for Social Concerns program in justice education and as a political columnist for the Universitys student-run
newspaper The Observer.
A member of Pi Sigma Alpha, Quaranto has a 3.9 grade point average and currently is completing a senior honors thesis on the way U.S. policy interests in East Africa exacerbate internal conflicts.
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Originally published by at newsinfo.nd.edu on December 01, 2005.