As we come to the end of the academic year, I’d like to share some of the great work done by the Strand Group in 2024-25 with particular reference to the first year of the MA Government Studies:
Fantastic guest practitioners in the classroom & No10!
For over 30 years, starting with Professor Peter (now the Lord) Hennessy, our individual module teaching always had a strong practitioner focus. The launch last Autumn of a full MA Government Studies programme with an expanded teaching offering saw our approach turbo-charged with the best special guests every week including:
- Sir Tony Blair
- Dame Colette Bowe
- Lord Case
- Gordon Corera
- Gareth Davies
- Baroness Fall
- Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman
- David Gauke
- Lord Gove
- Sir Jeremy Hunt
- Baroness Hunter
- Munira Mirza
- Baroness Nye
- Dame Sue Owen
- Jessica Pulay
- Sir Tom Scholar
- Professor Tony Travers
And we had the annual seminar in No.10.
Training future leaders
The Strand Group aims to deliver the best possible teaching. We are delighted that anonymous student appraisal this year has given the new MA Government Studies an overall satisfaction rating of 92%.
We obviously recognise the rocketing price of postgraduate study and have secured £400k worth of support for those good enough to join the MA Government Studies but unable to afford it – 8 full-fee studentships were awarded this year and last on a competitive basis. A particular thank you goes to our two-decades long Visiting Professor Sir Kevin Tebbit, former Permanent Under-Secretary to the Minister of Defence and Director of GCHQ, for chairing the bursary board both years.
As the MA Government Studies nears the end of its first year, our efforts turn to what our students will do next. The media is awash with how hard it is this year for graduate employment and we are rising to the challenge. Paid internships are like gold dust and we are working hard to create as many opportunities as possible. Our long-time friend Jimmy Leach opened the door to Dilara Saglam who benefited from a fortnight at Cardew Group Strategic Communications. While this Autumn sees four 8-weeks internships in the Department for Business and Trade supported by Visiting Fellow James Johns and his company Workday.
Supported by another alum of Lord Hennessy, Roderick Jones CEO of Concentric Solutions out of San Francisco, we have begun the process of helping our students into work. One can never claim full credit, but even at this early point, we are delighted that Jonathan Graham is now a researcher with Rothschilds, Kit Haukeland is chief researcher on Anthony Seldon’s forthcoming Sunak at 10 while Jake Brown has recently accepted a job in the Cabinet Office and Dilara likewise with the Home Office – we wish them all the very best
As Adrian Wooldridge wrote in his Bloomberg column a few weeks back, ‘The Strand Group at King’s College London focuses on training future leaders in the art of government’ and ‘the Strand Group emphasizes the importance of recruiting leaders from a broader spectrum of backgrounds.’
Academia-Government-Business – it’s what we’ve been doing for over two decades
Today we are delighted to announce a new collaboration with Deloitte who will pay for two social mobility focused full fee studentships alongside general support for the Group’s activities.
They join long-term Strand Group sponsors AWS, Workday and the City of London Corporation.
Commercial tie-ups have always been at the heart of what we do. From our first days over 20 years ago at Queen Mary University of London, we flourished due to the incredible support from the company EDS which continued after its purchase by Hewlett-Packard, enabling bursaries, research and nearly 200 seminars.
We believe that true collaboration between Academia, Government and Business drives greater understanding for all and greatly benefits student access and employability.
Elite networking – not just for the elite
Events like ours help make university a transformational, rather than just transactional experience.
The Strand Group has now held 77 events (and our precursor the Mile End Group saw 109 – so we’re at 186 overall), all free to attend and commercially-sponsored for over 20 years. This academic year we’ve hosted: Permanent Secretary to the Department for Business and Trade Gareth Davies; the valedictory lecture from the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case; our local MP Rachel Blake; Ed Balls and another one of his stellar panels including Andy Haldane, Baroness Vadera and Martin Wolf; Treasury Deputy Director Mario Pisani chaired by HMT’s Permanent Secretary James Bowler; and our own Dr Michelle Clement launching her first book with Sir Michael Barber. The last event for this academic year took place on 15 July with the Ofcom Chair Lord Grade.
This year we’ve welcomed over a thousand attendees to our events available to all, and students past and present are always in strong attendance.
But this was not all. For the new MA, we lined up many student-only seminars including Andrew Roberts (Baron Roberts of Belgravia) on his 500k selling biography of Churchill, Iain Dale on the art of interviewing and the former President of Iceland (and yet another former student of Lord Hennessy) Professor Guðni Jóhannesson on being an historian and head of state.
Applications for MA Government Studies 2025-26 are up!
But looking forward and we are delighted, excited and proud to announce that applications are markedly up for this Autumn’s second year of the MA!
Thanks to all who have helped make the first year such a success.
And there are still last-minute places available on the MA for this Autumn though the deadline is fast approaching: