By Western News

Chris Bundock, who completed his PhD in the Department of English, was selected as one of two Governor General’s Gold Medal recipients as graduate students with the highest academic standing. The pair was presented the medals during The University of Western Ontario’s convocation week, June 13-17.

Bundock is humbled to know multiple people at different levels of the faculty advocated for him to be awarded the medal.

“It’s really nice,” he says of the recognition. “When I first came to Western, the Centre for Theory and Criticism was the reason I came to do a master’s degree there. It is unlike really anything else in Canada.”

To expand his knowledge of literature, Bundock decided to complete a master’s degree in English and later pursued a PhD in the subject.

“Having that extra couple of years to live with some books and to gain a certain kind of comfort with some writers is hugely important for getting through the dissertation in a timely fashion,” he says.

Bundock was one of the key organizers for the international conference on Romanticism & Evolution held at Western in May. He is currently a postdoctoral student at Duke University.

“I truly was a bit surprised with a university this large to find a group of like-minded people who are not just professionally supportive, but actually personally supportive,” Bundock says. “The personal connections and the sense people you work with actually care about you is not just something that happens at community colleges, but I definitely felt that at Western.”