What do our students say?

five BA Global Development graduates

In July 2023, we had our first graduating cohort on the BA Global Development. This is what our students had to say about their experience on the degree and their future plans:

Isla: 'One of my favourite things, I think, is that we have such a small cohort, but everyone's got their own unique takes on things and where they come from different backgrounds. And it really means you get to not only really bond with your cohort, but get to know what each other's strengths are and really work together to work through issues and global development problems, which I really love, and you really get to explore that through PBL. In the future, I'm going to do a Masters at Sussex in Gender and Violence after taking a year out to do some travelling.'

Olivia: 'What I've enjoyed about this course is, for starters, how interactive it was. So I really enjoyed that we all got to, you know, just talk to each other a lot through PBL, bounce ideas off of each other. It, I mean, from day one, basically completely broadened my horizons because I was hearing what everyone else thought and all the different things they were reading, which, yeah, it just really helped to kind of give me a wider perspective, a wider worldview on a lot of topics. So I really, really enjoyed that. I also really loved how we were able to pick modules from different departments, because for me, as someone who didn't know exactly what they wanted to do, that was just really helpful for being able to explore lots of different options.

I had a focus on sustainability and got to explore that through environment and geography. You could go into politics, you could go into really, most areas, which I think that was something that I really enjoyed and helped me now figure out what I want to do for my Masters. At the moment I have an internship with an agricultural charity working on some fundraising opportunities. But long term, I think I'd like to go into some kind of sustainability consulting, but I'm still exploring that. And then for a Master's, I'd really like to focus on environmental, social and governance issues (ESG).'

Jack: 'I really enjoyed how the course let us explore different countries from different perspectives: political, geographical, economic, the different ways we wanted to write our essays. I'm now working in Political Violence analysis, which I find really interesting, and it really, really ties in well to what I studied.'

Maryam: 'I've just really enjoyed the interactive nature of the course, like meeting new people. I've loved how close we've all got over these three years. And also a highlight was probably the Ghana trip that I went on was amazing. We learned so many skills, like research skills, actually putting them into practice. We got to do our own research projects about something we were passionate about; so mine was on women's work and women's household responsibilities and how COVID impacted that, which was really interesting. I'm hoping to, in the near future, do a human rights masters or human rights law masters and maybe go into policy research.'

Liv: 'I really enjoyed the PBL, the problem based learning sessions because it really gave you the opportunity to work as a team, to sort of direct how you wanted to do the studying and also also like to be able to chair and sort of lead. It's a really good opportunity to develop not just your academic skills, but your people skills and those sorts of things. And then basically what I want to do is work in policy, but also I'm interested in environment, so I'm thinking maybe on the poverty and environment side of things. But for now, I'm working at a charity. I have also considered doing a Master's as well, so we'll see how that goes. I think I might do the public administration one. I want to stay in the development sort of sphere. I mean, now I'm going to be working in the UK just to get some experience and then build up towards hopefully working internationally.'