SPS - Jonathan Yiangou

Jonathan Yiangou studied English, History and Maths at A Level. After graduating he livedin Parisfor a year, and is currently studying for an MSc in International Political Economy at the LSE. He will begin working in the European Commission, DG External Relations, in October.

'I came from a school where conformity and mediocrity were more common than academic achievement, and so to do well academically was both isolating and, conversely, self-aggrandising. St. John’s emphatically reversed this: to do your best was expected; pretensions were quickly exposed. It was an academic environment that encouraged you to grow and learn, recognising and rewarding progress whilst not losing sight of how much more there was still to gain. It was this environment and the supervisors who fostered it that instilled in me a desire for deeper study – a desire that carries on today both privately and in my Masters.

I began studying history, but switched to SPS for my Part II is search of more contemporary engagement. The beauty of the course for me was the way it grounded the empirical questions of political science in a deep intellectual context. This was not only satisfying as a field of study, but gave me a lens through which to better understand the world as it is. And this, surely, is the reason we bother to study at all!

Pursuing the dark arts of politics now leads me to Brussels and a stage in the European Commission. After that, I may enter a career in policy, or perhaps the academic bug will draw me into a PhD. Studying SPS at St. John’s creates a lot of choice for your future career.'

  - Johnathan Yiangou, graduated 2006