University of Pennsylvania graduate student Adelaide Lyall and fourth-year Norah Rami have been chosen as 2026 Marshall Scholars. Established by the British government, the Marshall Scholarship funds as much as three years of study for a graduate degree in any field at an institution in the United Kingdom.
Lyall and Rami are among the 43 Marshall Scholars for 2026 representing 31 institutions in the United States chosen from 1,023 applicants. Meant to strengthen U.S.-U.K. relations, the prestigious scholarship is offered to winners based on academic merit, leadership, and ambassadorial potential.
Lyall, from Saco, Maine, is a graduate student in the School of Social Policy & Practice studying social policy. She is also a 2025 graduate of the College of Arts & Sciences and majored in sociology with a minor in Hispanic studies. Lyall interned at the National Consumer Law Center, American Civil Liberties Union, and Terrance Lewis Liberation Foundation. She volunteers for the Youth Advocacy Project at Penn Carey Law and worked as a writing tutor at the Marks Family Writing Center. As an undergraduate, she was recognized as a Dean’s Scholar, Benjamin Franklin Scholar, and Andrea Mitchell Center Undergraduate Research Fellow.
Her senior thesis, “‘We left a great life’: African Immigrant Incorporation in Maine,” analyzing the experiences of African asylum seekers, won the E. Digby Baltzell Award for Outstanding Senior Thesis in Sociology. With the Marshall Scholarship, Lyall will pursue master’s degrees in data and artificial intelligence ethics and digital sociology at the University of Edinburgh. After returning to the U.S., she plans to pursue a law degree.
Rami, from Sugar Land, Texas, is studying English and political science in the College of Arts & Sciences, with concentrations in literary theory and political theory and a minor in history. She is editor-in-chief of 34th Street Magazine, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Chalkbeat, Teen Vogue, The Philadelphia Citizen, and other outlets; her reporting on the Supreme Court was featured on NPR’s “Here and Now.” Rami works as a tutor at the Marks Family Writing Center, is vice president of Pi Sigma Alpha, is a University Scholar, and serves as a mentor with PEER.
She has contributed to projects at the Penn Computational Social Science Lab and was a board member of Penn Mock Trial. As a Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting Campus Fellow, Rami reported on literary markets in India. With the Marshall Scholarship, Rami will spend a year studying media governance at the London School of Economics and then complete an MPhil in sociolegal research at the University of Oxford.
Lyall and Rami applied for the Marshall Scholarship with assistance from the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. They are the 28th and 29th Marshall Scholars from Penn since the scholarship’s inception in 1953 and among the 15 Penn affiliates chosen in the last eight consecutive years.
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