Context-aware translation drafts. Original English remains available.
Russian celebrates Daria and Adémidé’s family heritage; Igbo celebrates Lékan’s maternal roots.
Translation notes & sourcesSuggest a correction ↗BIRKBECK, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON / MSC / COMPLETED 2016
Government, Policy and Politics changed how I read, how I write and what I am prepared to take for granted. That first master’s still runs through my work, my cultural projects and the questions I ask of the world.
ON FILM / LEARNING AFTER WORK
That is me with my cohort in a course seminar, in one of my two brief appearances in Birkbeck’s postgraduate study film. I was combining full-time work with evening lectures and seminars: laptop away, coat back on, brain politely asked to do another shift.
Some London evenings were bitterly cold. My enthusiasm for learning was usually warmer than my hands. But the conversations, the challenge of a difficult text and the satisfaction of finally making an argument hold together made those journeys worthwhile.
It was rewarding in the end, and the learning has kept paying its way. If you are considering postgraduate study, or simply returning to something you have always wanted to learn, I hope this offers a little encouragement. You do not need to arrive with every answer. Curiosity, a workable plan and a decent coat are a useful start.
The university’s awareness film explores postgraduate taught study in the arts, humanities and social sciences. My appearance here is seminar footage; the film’s featured graduate interviews describe other students’ experiences.
Playing loads YouTube’s privacy-enhanced player. Watch directly on YouTube ↗
THE FIRST MASTER’S / A LASTING CHANGE
I completed my MSc in Government, Policy and Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, in 2016. It gave me more than subject knowledge. Critical reading meant asking how an argument was built. Critical writing meant making a case that could withstand a challenge. Critical thinking meant being willing to examine my own assumptions as closely as someone else’s.
After the degree, I began to decolonize my thinking: to question inherited accounts of history, power and identity, and to ask whose knowledge had been treated as authoritative or pushed to the margins. That remains an ongoing inquiry. I want the questions to be searching, and the evidence to be able to challenge the answer I hoped to find.
This learning deepened my interest in global governance and geopolitics. It also travelled with me into the workplace: understanding institutions, listening to competing perspectives, interpreting evidence and writing clearly enough for people to make a decision.
Years later, my second master’s in AI and Data Science added computational methods to that foundation. The connecting thread is inquiry: understand the question, examine the evidence, explain the reasoning and remain open to correction.
THE LEARNING BEHIND THE LEARNING
My MSc comprised these four confirmed modules and a final-year dissertation. The reflections below describe how I carry the learning forward into work, AI and Tapestries.
01 / MODULE
Institutions, authority and the gap between formal rules and political practice.
In my work today, I ask where a decision really sits: who is accountable, who can influence it and where a process differs from its diagram.
02 / MODULE
How competing interests, ideas and institutions shape a policy problem and the response to it.
This lens informs discovery and AI adoption: whose problem are we solving, which assumptions frame the options, and what would make a change workable?
03 / MODULE
A comparative lens on government, representation and institutional arrangements.
Comparison helps me test whether an approach fits its setting. A governance model or delivery method needs to be examined in context before it is transferred.
04 / MODULE
Questions of security, power and the human consequences of political choices.
This remains part of my interest in geopolitics. In cultural work, it prompts care over how conflict is narrated and whose experience is heard.
05 / FINAL-YEAR DISSERTATION
My archive records the research question: “To What Extent Has Labour’s Post-1997 Constitutional Reform Programme Altered the Westminster Model?”
The notes bring together constitutional reform, parliamentary sovereignty, devolution and competing accounts of the Westminster model. They show the work of comparing arguments and organising a sustained inquiry into institutional change.
Define the question tightly. Compare explanations. Track sources. Distinguish a change in formal arrangements from a change in practice. Write a conclusion proportionate to the evidence. These habits remain useful when I evaluate an AI proposal, examine an organisational process or develop a Tapestries narrative.
The archive contains drafts and supporting reading. No dissertation mark, final conclusion or publication status is asserted here.
TRANSFERABLE SKILLS / STILL IN USE
| Learning habit | In work and AI | In Tapestries and cultural inquiry |
|---|---|---|
| Critical reading | Check the source, assumptions and limits behind a requirement, dataset or model claim. | Compare scholarly accounts and oral traditions without treating either as interchangeable evidence. |
| Critical writing | Make a clear recommendation, show alternatives and explain the trade-offs. | Build narration that separates established context, inherited memory, contested accounts and dramatization. |
| Institutional analysis | Map decision rights, incentives, ownership and the conditions for adoption. | Explore authority, legitimacy, succession and the relationships between communities. |
| Comparative thinking | Ask whether a method fits a new setting before reusing it. | Examine different accounts and political arrangements without flattening their particular histories. |
| Research discipline | Keep an evidence trail, document uncertainty and invite review. | Use claim and source ledgers, preserve disagreement and make space for knowledgeable human review. |
These are my reflections on the relationship between the degree and my later practice. The linked case studies carry their own delivery status and evidence boundaries.
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