Dr Tom Godfrey

Over the last eighteen months, as part of a major drive to improve career and study skills, the Politics department has organised a series of ‘Sussex Success Stories’ alumni talks and workshops. Recent Politics graduates, who will have taken the same modules as current students and have already been successful in their chosen career paths, have been returning to share their insights and tell us ‘how they did it’. A one-hour talk and Q&A session is followed by more informal discussion in the IDS bar with the guest speaker and Dr Tom Godfrey, the department’s dedicated employability lecturer and organiser of the alumni talks series. 

In order to encourage current students to emulate them, all of the speakers emphasise what, specifically, they got from their Politics degrees, including the extra-curricular activities that they undertook during their time at Sussex, which have helped them to succeed. The series includes alumni who have taken a wide range of trajectories, including talks on careers in: education and educational advocacy, recruitment, the civil service, the charitable sector, local government and public policy, together with former students who have been active in front-line politics. There have also been talks about how to: maximise student experience to get more out of your time at Sussex and enhance future employability; achieve consistent First Class grades; undertake a Junior Research Associate (JRA) internship; and prepare yourself for postgraduate study (including Law conversion courses). 

Highlights from the series have include talks from: the Conservative party’s head of media monitoring Henry Chamberlain; European Central Bank researcher Julia Milis; Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves’ treasury assistant Lucy Williams; and Alara Cleur, who presented her JRA project on how the fracking industry lobbies the UK Parliament at last year’s national undergraduate research conference in London. This year’s series will round off at the end of March with a talk on careers in local government and front-line politics by Matt Boughton, leader of Tonbridge and Malling Council in Kent.

The ‘Sussex Success Stories’ series is one of a number of events involving alumni and friends of the Politics department aimed at improving our students’ career skills and embedding employability into the curriculum. This term, for example, has also seen ‘Politics Masterclasses’ led off by: Sussex Politics alumni and ITV Merdian’s Politics Correspondent Kit Bradshaw; another alumnus, ‘Times’ Chief Political Correspondent and currently the Sussex Political Writer in Residence, Aubrey Allegretti (who has also contributed to the student-run Sussex Politics Blog); and Rachel Reeves’ former speechwriter Nick Garland. 

Tom Godfrey commented: 

‘The “Sussex Success Stories” series celebrates recent Politics graduates who performed well on their degrees and are making waves in their chosen careers. It informs current students of the transferable skills that taking our Politics degree provides them with and that will help them in their subsequent career paths. The talks also highlight the importance of the extra-curricular activities that our alumni undertook while they were at Sussex. The aim is to encourage our current students to emulate and learn from them. The series also illustrates the diverse range of career paths that are available to someone undertaking a Sussex Politics degree’. 

‘An important part of the talks is the social element afterwards, which enables students to continue the discussion with the speakers informally. All of the speakers also gladly receive follow-up questions and queries from our current students and in many cases keep in touch with them to help them get on to similar career paths. In effect, they often end up acting as “consultants” for our students!’ 

Head of the Politics department, Prof Aleks Szczerbiak commented: 

‘It is great that so many of our wonderful Politics alumni want to keep in touch and are happy to share their experiences and insights with current and future cohorts. Working closely with our Careers and Entrepreneurship team, Tom’s “Sussex Success Stories” series is one of a number of excellent initiatives that we have developed to help our students succeed in their chosen future career paths.’ 

‘The Sussex Politics degree is one of the most career- and skill-focused in the country. Ensuring that the politics we teach and research has a practical, real world applicability, including to the world of work, is at the heart of everything we do.’ 

For a longer LPS blog post from Tom with more information on the ‘Sussex Success Stories’, including how the department builds on the alumni talks to source Politics internships, read this.