Lauren E. Baer ’02 and Sarah E. Moss ’02 have won Marshall Scholarships to spend the coming year conducting postgraduate study in Britain.

Baer, of Dunster House, and Moss, of Leverett House, are two of 40 winners of the prestigious scholarship nationwide.

Five Harvard students won the scholarship last year.

Baer, a native of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., is a social studies concentrator with a focus on international development. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

“I look forward to the opportunity to study with a world-renowned faculty and students from around the world, and to experience British culture for two years,” Baer said.

For the past year, Baer has served as an associate editorial chair of The Crimson, where she writes a bi-weekly column, “Writes and Wrongs.”

Baer said she plans to use her Marshall to pursue an M.Phil in Development Studies at Oxford University.

“It is a wonderful opportunity to study at one of the finest development studies programs in the world,” Baer said.

Moss is a mathematics concentrator from Normal, Ill. She plans to study philosophy at Oxford. Her thesis subject is topological social choice, but she has also focused on the study of Kant’s ethical theory. Moss is also a member of Phi Beta Kappa, plays violin in the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and has worked for Eating Concerns Hotline and Outreach (ECHO).

Moss was out of town and unavailable for comment.

Terri Evans, spokesperson for the British Consulate-General in Boston and a member of the Marshall committee for the region, said Marshall Scholars consistently represent “a sense of global citizenship.”

More than a thousand Americans have been named Marshall Scholars since the scholarship’s founding.

The Marshall Scholarships were established in 1953 as a British gesture of thanks to the American people for the assistance granted by the U.S. after World War II under the Marshall Plan.

The Marshall scholarship is funded by the British government and provides American students with the opportunity to pursue a second undergraduate or graduate degree at any British university for two or three years.

Oxford University, Cambridge University and the London School of Economics of the University of London are the three most popular choices, Evans said. The scholarships are worth about $50,000 each.

The Marshall Committee looks for students who have a background of high academic achievement and who are likely to become leaders in their field and make a contribution to society.

Former Marshall scholars include United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Duke University president and former Wellesley College president Nannerl Keohane and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Friedman of The New York Times.