It would seem Emily Ross has spent a great portion of her life achieving one thing or another.

She earned eight A*s in her GCSE results in 2006 and the maximum points possible in her IB exams two years later. She is a coxswain for a local rowing team, has won prestigious awards for her work in drama and music, and speaks fluent Spanish, Italian, and Mandarin.

“I like languages,” she said. “They’re like a puzzle. I especially like the concept of untranslatable words. I think, if you can, reading a source in its original language is a huge plus because a lot of layers of meaning can be lost in translation.”

The 23-year old Bermuda High School graduate is now pursuing a doctorate in criminology from the University of Oxford.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in social policy from the University of Bristol, and a master’s degree in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Oxford.

Little more than a month into the three-year PhD course, Ms Ross hopes to eventually return to Bermuda to work in public and criminal justice policy.

“I was originally accepted to study a BA in Spanish at the University of Bristol,” Ms Ross said. “However, my experiences during my gap year volunteering at Focus Counselling Service and the Drug Treatment Programme in Bermuda inspired me to transfer to the BSc in social policy.”

She has funded her academic pursuits through countless scholarships, awards and jobs in hospitality, all while volunteering here and abroad.

Most recently, Ms Ross was awarded the Bank of Bermuda Foundation’s Sir John W Cox Scholarship, which will pay for the entirety of her postgraduate studies.

“I’m very lucky. [The Sir John W Cox Scholarship] covers all three years — tuition, travel, living expenses, everything. It was the same deal for my last scholarships so I feel very indebted.”

Top on the to-do list for Ms Ross today is research for her thesis, upon which the entirety of her PhD will rest.

“[My thesis has] two parts really — first I’m attempting to construct a sociology of Bermuda, looking at how a small, diverse country shaped by outside cultural influences is able to form a common identity.

“I find it fascinating that Bermudians have a very strong sense of Bermudian identity, but widely differing personal definitions of what it actually means to be Bermudian.”

The other aspect of her thesis, Ms Ross said, will be “looking at the impact of violent crime on Bermudian society and how Bermudians view their own society”.

“Gang violence is still a very new problem to Bermuda and it’s interesting to see how people are dealing with it,” she added.

Through looking at the components of Bermudian society such as race, religion, culture and language, she said she hopes to better understand what it means to be Bermudian and also how to contribute to criminology research.

Asked what being Bermudian means to her, Ms Ross said: “I think there’s something hypnotising about Bermuda. I love how long it takes me to walk down Reid Street because I’m always running into people. For me, being Bermudian is being a part of a [somewhat dysfunctional] family.

“[We are] united by a piece of distractingly beautiful land, but divided by a lot of social-cultural tensions.”