Politics news

Aubrey Allegretti

In this important role, Sussex alumnus Aubrey Allegretti will help Politics undergraduates to become outstanding political communicators. In particular, he will lead writing workshops dedicated to honing students’ communication skills. Alongside these workshops, Aubrey will deliver guest lectures on the topics of journalism and political communication, drawing on his everyday experience of Westminster politics.

Aubrey Allegretti joined The Times and was previously Senior Political Correspondent for The Guardian, where he worked for nearly three years. Prior to that, he was  a political reporter for Sky News and HuffPostUK/ The Huffington Post UK. These appointments cap-off several years of journalistic achievement, during which he won a “30 under 30” young journalist award, and was recognised by Pagefield as the journalist's whose influence grew most in 2022.

Aubrey’s appointment as Political Writer in Residence brings things full-circle. He graduated with a BA in Politics at Sussex in 2013. In fact, Aubrey’s career in journalism began at Sussex, where he was editor-in-chief of The Badger, Sussex’s award-winning student newspaper. Aubrey was also a very active member of the University’s student-led Politics Society.

Aubrey is scheduled to give his first guest lecture in the autumn term on Monday 21 October. This will be aimed at assisting students with their blog-writing assessments and giving them insights into the journalistic world that he has made such a successful career in. Aubrey will be joined for this event by another of our high-achieving Sussex alumni, Lucy Williams, a close friend of Aubrey's who works as a Treasury Assistant to Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves.

The workshop/careers event will shed light on the links between journalism and political communication, with politics and public policy. Aubrey will then run another work-in-progress assessment preparation workshop in the Spring term, organise and judge a political blog writing competition, contribute to our own student-run Sussex Politics blog, and organise ‘work shadowing’ days for students to travel to London and see what a day in Aubrey’s life working in parliament looks like.

Professor Aleks Szczerbiak, Head of the Politics Department, commented: ‘Aubrey Allegretti’s appointment will help us to prepare our students for careers in journalism, politics, government and the creative industries. We are thrilled to have him back at Sussex again and I know that our students are excited to be working with a journalist of Aubrey’s calibre, and hear about his experience at the “coalface” of British politics.’

Allegretti is the third journalist to hold the position of Political Writer in Residence at Sussex. He succeeds Stephen Bush, associate editor and columnist at The Financial Times who held the post from 2019. The inaugural Political Writer in Residence was Yvonne Roberts, former chief leader writer for The Guardian, who assumed the position in 2016.

The Sussex Politics Department offers its undergraduates a range of modules dedicated to the language of, and communication in, politics, including its popular second year optional module, Communicating Politics, and a third-year dissertation module on The Politics of Feeling. The addition of Aubrey for the 2024/25 academic year further underscores the department’s commitment to recognising the way that the academic rigour of the Politics discipline is transferable to the sphere of ‘real world’ Political Communication.

Aubrey Allegretti said: “The University of Sussex gave me more opportunities than I could have hoped for, and I’m delighted to be returning to help pass on knowledge and skills to today’s students. I’m thrilled to be working so closely with the Politics department and their terrific faculty. Journalism is a fantastic career and I can’t wait to work with Sussex students to enhance their skills in the political communications field.”

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