Princeton senior Pia Sarah Haykel awarded Michel David-Weill Scholarship

Pia Sarah Haykel has been awarded the 2025 Michel David-Weill Scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in history at Sciences Po in Paris. Haykel is a history major pursuing a certificate in European Cultural Studies and a minor in Persian. 

The Michel David-Weill Scholarship was endowed in 2011 to support one American student to pursue a master’s program at Sciences Po, one of the leading French universities in human and social sciences. For her master’s, Haykel plans to explore exchanges between France and the Indo-Persian world by investigating objects of encounters such as texts and archives, textiles and art. 

On campus, Haykel is a student researcher for the Special Collection of Rare Books and Manuscripts Near Eastern Studies wing and serves as an AccessAbility Fellow. She interned at the Museum of Modern Art, the University of Copenhagen and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Haykel was also named a 2024-2025 PIIRS Undergraduate Student Fellow for which she produced a video project about Indo-Persianate motifs within Indian crafts.