Shehani Fernando, 1997

Shehani Fernando read History at Clare. After graduating she went on to pursue a masters in photojournalism and now directs and produces factual immersive content.

Who was your greatest Clare influence and why?

Polly O’Hanlon was my director of studies and her work on Early Modern India was one of the reasons I applied in the first place. Polly opened my eyes to histories of gender and social history in South Asia, and as a female academic who had been in the first cohort of women at Clare in 1972, she made a big impact and was a considerable role model.

Shehani's Story

I was introduced to Clare by a friend of mine, Atif Sheikh (Clare1996), who had started the year before and encouraged me to apply. I met some of his friends who all seemed incredibly engaging and crucially very ‘normal’ and so I looked no further! Clare appealed for its relatively small size, exceptional reputation for music, stunning gardens and the lure of the cellars.

The thing I valued most at Clare was the engaged student body, close-knit college community and the freedom to explore a range of interests. I threw myself into various artistic endeavours; serving on the May Ball committee on the design team for our first year New York themed ball, doing a stint as lead singer with the Cambridge University Jazz Orchestra and programming the jazz nights at the cellars with my good friend Beth Psaila. While I never felt that my gender was an issue at Clare, I do think the student body is now much more ethnically diverse today than it was then and I’m glad to see that there’s so much emphasis on outreach to attract a truly representative intake.

While at Clare, I dabbled in filming and editing video for a local cable TV station and took photographs for Varsity, (Zadie Smith and Salman Rushdie were some of my early subjects). I spent many happy hours in the college darkroom which was in a little shed at the back of Memorial Court.

Some of this, no doubt, led me to pursue a career in media working for the BBC and the Guardian in the early days of video journalism. In the last few years, I’ve started to direct stories in new mediums like virtual reality and augmented reality. From AR apps for museums to VR experiences about climate change, I’m exploring how stories can be told spatially which is quite exciting.

If I could give my younger self advice, it would be:
- have a go at things you haven’t tried before that are out of your comfort zone
- attend more of the visiting lectures from some of the extraordinary people that Cambridge attracts
- have a bit more self-belief – everything turns out okay in the end!