From the Amazon to the Caucasus: global journeys celebrated at the Wallace Watson Lecture 2026
Students, Fellows and members of the St Catherine’s community gathered this week for the annual Wallace Watson Lecture, celebrating the global journeys and research made possible through the Wallace Watson Awards.
Held in memory of St Catz student, Wallace Watson, and supported by the Watson family, the awards enable Catz students to pursue ambitious projects around the world, from archival research and fieldwork to trekking expeditions and cultural exploration. Each year recipients return to College to share their experiences.
This year’s lecture showcased projects spanning South America, the Caucasus and Central Asia, highlighting both academic curiosity and the spirit of adventure the awards are designed to support. One presentation described travelling to Manaus in the Brazilian Amazon to take part in the region’s first Amazonian Health ‘Datathon’. Bringing together doctors, engineers and researchers, the event focused on analysing real-world health data to address challenges such as malaria, dengue and access to healthcare in remote communities.
Another talk followed a research journey through Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, where archival work helped illuminate the nineteenth-century history of the Caucasus. Alongside time spent in national archives, the trip also became a deeply personal journey, allowing the researcher to visit the region from which their family had once been exiled.
The evening’s keynote presentation came from Isabel Spitzer, who shared the story of an expedition that did not go quite to plan. Originally intending to trek in Tajikistan, she and a friend were unexpectedly denied entry at the border and instead found themselves improvising a new journey through Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. The trip ultimately led them across the Caucasus mountains, where days of hiking and uncertainty gave way to moments of striking beauty above the cloud line.
The lecture concluded with the announcement of the 2026 Wallace Watson Award recipients.
A Wallace Watson Career Scholarship was awarded to Rameen Iftikhar, who will undertake doctoral fieldwork examining education, empowerment and opportunity for young women across rural and urban Punjab, Pakistan.
A second Career Scholarship was awarded to Emmanuel Berrelleza, who will undertake an internship with UNESCO’s Right to Education team in Paris.
The Wallace Watson Research Award was presented to Oscar Lawson, who will travel to Floreana Island in the Galápagos to investigate new foraging behaviours in Darwin’s finches.
The Wallace Watson Award itself was awarded to Anthony Fernando, who plans a three-week motorcycle expedition across the Andes. A joint award was also granted to Oliver Dingle and Albert Smith, who will undertake a trekking expedition through the Ak-Suu region of the Terskey Ala-Too mountains in Kyrgyzstan.
Together, the projects reflect the enduring spirit of the Wallace Watson Awards: curiosity, resilience and the willingness to explore far beyond the classroom.
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Find out more about the Wallace Watson Awards, here.