PhD student proves age is no barrier to education

An inspiring graduate from Middlesex University is proving age is no barrier to achieving your dreams in education

Dr Needyanand Raya, who lives in Enfield, North London, has just reached his lifelong goal of completing a PhD in Social Policy at the age of 69.

Since moving to the UK in 1999, Dr Raya has worked in forensic mental health but always harboured ambitions to study the impact of colonialism in his home country of Mauritius.

After his sons grew up, Dr Raya returned to his studies at Middlesex University under the guidance of Eleonore Kofman, Professor of Gender, Migration and Citizenship, and his second supervisor, Anastasia Christou, Professor of Sociology and Social Justice.

Commenting on his PhD, Dr Raya, said:

“Eleonore always encouraged me, saying I had so much potential. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be in this position.”

It has been a remarkable journey for Dr Raya who revealed he grew up in humble origins on the Indian Ocean Island and had to drop out of education.

“I come from quite a downtrodden family, my father was a barber and my mother worked as a maid servant, and I often helped her with the cleaning. I worked collecting wood from the forest and picking fruit and had to drop out of school because my parents couldn’t afford the fees.

“I told myself that one day I would study so much that there would be no more examinations left to take. Those words are still ringing in my head to this day. This experience instilled in me an inner resilience and the belief that you can achieve anything if work hard and want it.”  

Dr Needyanand Raya

In his lifetime, Dr Raya has become a Master in Tae Kwon Do and he said the “martial discipline has helped so much with his diet and lifestyle.” He lives in a “house of academia” as his wife is a former primary school teacher, while his son aged thirty-five teaches in a medical school and his youngest son aged twenty-eight is a family psychologist.

For his PhD, Dr Raya studied a subject close to his heart as he focused on the post-colonial experiences of the Mauritian Creole French-speaking community.

“They have what is called ‘Malaise Créole,’ a kind of bitterness, a feeling of exclusion and being marginalised which still exists to this day,” he said.

“Colonisation is the same process everywhere but the experiences in different parts of the world are always different which I find fascinating.”

Mauritius gained its independence from the UK in 1968 but had previously been a French colony before the Napoleonic wars in the early nineteenth century.

Dr Raya worked closely with two Mauritian historians, one being his mentor and inspiration, the late Mr Anand Mulloo and Vijaya Teelock. He dedicated his project to the late Norwegian anthropologist Prof Thomas Hylland Eriksen who had extensively researched colonialism in the Indian Ocean. In future, Dr Raya will expand his research to cover the whole of the Indian Ocean region including the archipelagic creolisation of cultures in the Indian Ocean.

Speaking about his achievements, Prof Kofman said: “Dr Raya came back to Middlesex well over a decade after getting his MSc in Social Science Research Methods in 2005. He was so determined to get his PhD on an important topic that was close to him. I am thrilled about his accomplishment and that he will be continuing his significant research.”