Shrewsbury School – The Darwin Society welcomes back our first Old Salopian girl

28 Mar 2017

On 24th February, we were delighted to welcome back Michelle Degli Esposti (MSH 2008-09) to give a Darwin Society lecture on “What we know about the human brain”.

Michelle joined Shrewsbury School in 2008 as the only girl in the Upper Sixth and the following year become the first ever Old Salopian girl. She spent a Gap year working to support a trip to a remote Island in Fiji, where she helped an isolated village build a community hall and taught English. She then went on to read Experimental Psychology at Magdalen College, Oxford, where she graduated as top of the year with the Commendatory 1st Class Honours.

Michelle is currently studying for a DPhil in Experimental Psychology investigating Childhood Adversity and Life-time Resilience. The project focuses on a better understanding of the long-term psycho-pathological outcomes of people who were maltreated in childhood, specifically looking at risk factors and potential pathways to life-time resilience.

Michelle captivated an audience of current Shrewsbury School students, staff and visitors with her lecture on the different branches of psychology, which included audience participation and many pertinent examples of psychological experiments. She pitched her talk at a perfect level and left the audience asking for more.

She was accompanied by Ben Jenkins, who is a DPhil student in Materials Science at Oxford University. They were both very helpful in answering questions from a number of students who are interested in applying to Oxford next year.