An Ode to the Queen

The Blavatnik School of Government, which claims to be one of the University of Oxford’s newest and most vibrant departments, through its Instagram account, vehemently challenged Beth Harmon’s rightfulness as Crown’s owner, with an ode in honour of its most famous alumna, 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán):

Many of us have been mesmerised by Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit... but did you know we have our own queen of chess? Alumna and Rhodes scholar 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán) (MPP 2018, China 🇨🇳) is a four-time women’s world chess champion and currently the number one female player in the world ♟️ 🏆 ⭐ 逸凡 (Yìfán) is a record breaker, no doubt about that: ➡️ she’s the youngest-ever female player to qualify for the title of grandmaster ➡️ she’s the youngest ever to win the Women’s World Chess Championship ➡️ and has recently become the youngest full professor in the history of the University of 深圳 (Shēnzhèn), fulfilling her ambition to combine chess and education. Well done 逸凡 (Yìfán)! We’re so proud of how diverse, varied and sometimes surprising our MPP students’ background can be 💫

Photo © Lennart Ootes. Dotted text courtesy of Blavatnik School of Government (@blavatnikschool).