Ines Benjelloun ’26 Wins Coveted Watson Fellowship
The native Moroccan will travel to five countries to explore how music is used for healing
Ines Benjelloun ’26, a biology major concentrating in neuroscience from Casablanca, Morocco, has been named a Thomas J. Watson Fellow. Benjelloun is part of an elite group of 40 young leaders from around the country who comprise the 58th Class of Watson Fellows.
The fellowship allows her to pursue a year of independent travel to explore her project “Crossroads of Care: Music as the Universal Drug,” which will examine how music is used for healing processes across cultures in South Africa, Peru, Brazil, New Zealand, and Nepal.
After learning she was a Watson Fellow, Benjelloun felt a mix of emotions, including pride for the recognition of the hard work she put into applying for the fellowship.
“I am really grateful that [the Watson Foundation] was able to see the passion that I’ve had in the project. There is only so much that words can do,” she said, referring to her application. “I think for them to be able to feel the same passion that I had in the project is really rewarding.”
She is also proud to be representing Colby as the College’s second consecutive Watson Fellow, following Ella Carlson ’25.
“I’m a product of the school at the end, and all the people that helped me in the process are people that are affiliated with Colby, whom I wouldn’t have done it without,” she said. “To say that it’s my fellowship would be wrong. It takes a village.”
Benjelloun is Colby’s 68th Watson Fellow since 1971. The fellowship is a one-year $40,000 grant to pursue a personal project outside the United States available only to graduating seniors from select colleges. She was chosen from a nationwide pool of students representing the foundation’s 41 partnering colleges.
“The committee was thrilled to learn that Ines won a fellowship,” said Véronique Plesch, the James M. Gillispie Professor of Art and chair of Colby’s Watson Selection Committee. “As a person, she perfectly embodies the Watson Foundation’s vision of developing ‘humane and effective leaders.’ Ines possesses every trait the foundation seeks: imagination, independence, emotional maturity, and what Executive Director Chris Kasabach calls self-motivation.”
Blending music and medicine
Benjelloun’s project is the result of a lifelong journey, blending personal and academic interests.
“Music as care sits exactly where my training and inheritance meet, and it challenges both to grow,” Benjelloun wrote in her application. Throughout her yearlong travels, she will “map where clinic and ceremony can work together and where they should remain apart,” she said. “My approach to ‘health’ is holistic and weaves physical, functional, emotional, spiritual, and social well-being.”
She hopes to learn in settings where care is measured not only in symptoms, but also in belonging, regulation, and relationship.
‘Ines possesses a rare combination of self-assurance and humility, of curiosity and passion, of enthusiasm and compassion, with a quiet strength and warmth that puts everyone at ease. She will be an extraordinary ambassador for Colby.’
Véronique Plesch, Chair of Colby’s Watson Selection Committee
Benjelloun grew up in a family of physicians that exposed her to clinical reasoning and medical cases on a daily basis. She was also a committed pianist, blessed with a family member who grounded her creativity and encouraged it to blossom.
Her upbringing was shaped by this duality, with an equal pull toward the sciences and the arts.
Her childhood interest in science and music developed into a quest to find unity between them, first at the United World College (UWC) in Costa Rica and then at Colby. When she arrived on Mayflower Hill, she immersed herself in Colby’s science program while taking individual piano lessons.
“I continued asking questions that spilled beyond the lab bench. I learned to measure brain activity and follow sound from hair cells to the auditory cortex as it becomes perception and memory,” she wrote in her application. “Just as important, I kept my hands on the instrument through lessons and workshops. I learned that, as music is accompanied by context and expectation, one chorus lights up memory for one listener and registers as noise for another.”
As a TA in neurobiology, a role she assumed as a first-year student and has held up until now, she worked closely with April Chiriboga, a biology laboratory instructor II. Chiriboga said she relies on her judgment and leadership as the most senior team member.
“Ines is a force of nature. She is driven, imaginative, and emotionally intelligent,” said Chiriboga. “A rare combination of independence and collaboration defines her work: she leads with clarity while uplifting others.”
Seizing opportunities
Colby prepared Benjelloun for her Watson through coursework, internships, conferences, and study-abroad experiences. She took advantage of every opportunity she could.
Her Watson project, said Chiriboga, “is the natural extension of years of sustained, personal, and academic engagement. She has designed and carried out independent research on music and stress, and volunteered in neuro-rehabilitation settings, where she explored the therapeutic potential of music for conditions like Parkinson’s disease.”
Benjelloun coupled her academic work here with her personal and extracurricular activities in Australia, India, and Costa Rica to develop “sensitive and multicultural perspectives on many issues.
‘Ines is not only prepared for this project. She’s already living it.’
April Chiriboga, Biology Laboratory Instructor II
Many of Benjelloun’s opportunities were made possible as a Pulver Science Scholar, which provides selected students with experiences to prepare them to be scientific leaders and innovators.
“The Pulver Science Scholars program allowed me to believe that there were a lot of things that I could achieve without having the financial burden of it,” Benjelloun said. “So many of the achievements I’ve done, I owe to them.”
She also cited her two Jan Plan courses abroad as being influential—one in Costa Rica and another in India. Even though she is a seasoned traveler, these courses were the first time she combined traveling with learning within a context.
What binds together all of her experiences at and through Colby, however, are the people.
“You connect with people through these activities, and that adds another layer of meaning and importance to me,” she said. “The human connection teaches you way more than anything else.”
Benjelloun’s ability to connect with others is also visible during her piano performances, when people from across the campus and neighboring communities pack the concert hall. “Ines is poised in public performances, and her music-making is expressive and compelling,” said Lily Funahashi, associate professor of music and Benjelloun’s piano instructor. “But audiences come to support her as a person and charismatic leader. Their thunderous applause and armfuls of flower bouquets demonstrate their appreciation for the contributions Ines makes to their lives and their respective organizations.”
‘An awesome journey’
Benjelloun will begin her Watson Fellowship in July when she leaves Morocco to spend approximately 10 weeks in each country.
Her first stop is South Africa, where she will study the partnerships clinics have established with traditional Zulu healers that honor culture while meeting medical standards. In Peru, Benjelloun will shadow clinicians to observe how Amazonian practices are interwoven into addiction care. She plans to arrive in Brazil in January to experience Carnival and Afro-Brazilian traditions as communal medicine and belonging.
Continuing to New Zealand, she will witness a modern music-therapy field inseparable from te ao Māori, a relational, holistic view of the health of Māori people. Finishing in Nepal, she’ll explore Hindu, Buddhist, and Indigenous sound-based healing practices and the boundaries of translation.
‘I’m traveling to be changed, not to teach “better” practices. This year is about presence, apprenticeship, and ethical listening.’
Ines Benjelloun ’26, Watson Fellow
“It’s a little scary to know that now it’s actually happening, and everything that’s been so abstract is now a reality,” Benjelloun said. “It’s a new impulse, but I think it’s going to be an awesome journey.”
Plesch agreed.
“Ines possesses a rare combination of self-assurance and humility, of curiosity and passion, of enthusiasm and compassion, with a quiet strength and warmth that puts everyone at ease. She will be an extraordinary ambassador for Colby.”
A non-traditional path
As much as Benjelloun has learned at Colby, she recognizes that much of who she has become traces back to her upbringing and family.
“I wouldn’t trade being Moroccan for anything. It’s one of the best parts of me, and I’ve learned so much growing up there that I carry with me. There’s so much intersection and just a lot of appreciation for differences.”
She also credits her family for creating an environment that supported her growth, protected her without keeping her from the outside world, and dismantled stereotypes associated with definitions of a Moroccan woman.
“My parents taught me that I could do anything I wanted to do if I put my mind to it,” she said. “Their open-mindedness to the world is not confined to what societies limit you to do.”
Unlike most of her family, Benjelloun is traveling a non-traditional path.
“So many of my family members didn’t have those opportunities, and now they get to live them through me,” she said. “There’s a significance that I’m carrying forward a lot for my family as well.”
Benjelloun’s list of people to thank begins with her parents, brother, and extended family. It includes faculty members Sarah Braunstein, April Chiriboga, Lily Funahashi, Josh Martin, Mohammad Shabangu, Andrea Tilden, Chris Walker, and Natalie Zelensky; Colby’s Watson Selection Committee of Véronique Plesch, Gail Carlson, Flavien Falantin, and Carrie LeVan; and the entire UWC network.
“I’m traveling to be changed, not to teach ‘better’ practices. This year is about presence, apprenticeship, and ethical listening,” Benjelloun wrote in her application. “I am a prepared traveler, but a willing beginner whose goal is to become more fluent across ways of knowing.”
