Report on the Politics tour to Europe

An initial report

More on this tour will be written by students, but despite the terrible events that occurred while we were in Brussels on the 22 March, the whole trip did not become defined by that tragedy, instead it gave a greater focus and clarity to the political world that the students had organized to study.  Brussels was and probably remains the favourite city for many students, not just because of its beauty (as jaws literally dropped the morning the students wandered into the Grand Place just hours after landing), but also because of the many people from the EU, an NGO and the Australian embassy who were among the first people we met on the tour, including ex-NHS student, David Ross, who coincidently was working as an intern at the EU Parliament and met with us, the day we visited.   

We all learned so much about the nature of global politics in an intentional and also unexpected ways, that it continues to take time to process all that we experienced and learned while travelling to be documented.  The students were able to engage in intelligent and critical conversations with people from so many organisations, including the International Criminal Court, a range of people at Shell’s global headquarters in the Hague, through to a very frank discussion of Australia’s role in promoting human rights in the Asia-Pacific region with a representative of the German foreign office.  Many students have now got clear ideas for future study and careers mapped out from the many meetings we had.

The energy of the group to be out on our feet, at times for 12 hours straight, reflected the enthusiasm in which they sought to soak up the experience of visiting so many cities and people in such a short space of time.  Among all the interesting discussions with organisations, there was some time for fun, a major highlight being the highly complex escape room games which the students played in Berlin.

Except for the group photos the other photography connected with this piece was taken by one of the students, Henry Owen, who captured some strong images from our time away.

Paul Gilby and Megan Jeffery