Swansea is a fantastic place to study due to its unique location, fantastic student facilities (which are always cleaned or being renovated/modernised), outstanding teaching staff who will go above and beyond to support you and draw the very best out of you. Some difficulties of studying in Swansea can include reaching Singleton campus (either by bus or car) as the traffic and parking are extremely poor. Third party facilities such as eateries and shops are far too expensive when one could enter the city centre and pay more than half the price within the same chain/brand or perhaps a better brand. Overall, Swansea university (Singleton campus) is home to an extremely vibrant and progressive community where students are treated equally and with the utmost respect and professionalism; wellbeing is an important element of the university’s mission and they aim to ensure students and staff each have the opportunity to receive the support and guidance they require. The university also provides opportunities and support for any and all situations or aspirations one may have

The War and Society MA course offers students a chance to pursue modules in several subject areas (this being the support to a claim that it is the most interdisciplinary course within its subject areas); if modules a student wishes to pursue are not available, the faculty are more than happy to allow them to pursue these; lectures and seminars are frequent and extremely helpful for expanding knowledge and preparing for assessments. There were many student-led seminars where one student each week would lead the class for one hour (a 15 minute presentation followed by a 30/45 minute discussion of readings and wider concepts of theory). Students were generally respectful and aimed to complete all readings and preparations which is extremely helpful, on times where this was not the case the faculty member/s would lead the class in a way where everyone could still engage with the weekly topic discussions and details surrounding this. My largest critique was that some would refuse outright to complete any work or rely entirely upon AI, this made it extremely difficult for someone such as myself who manually examined each piece of work to extract the most out of each week; the lack of motivation was occasionally overlooked by some lecturers who would simply ask that they do it for next week- though every War and Society lecturer ensured readings were completed properly and attendance was known to be paramount. Truly, I cannot fault this course whatsoever. I made it clear at the beginning that I aim to pursue further doctoral study and the teaching staff of War and Society constantly aided me with studies and discussions surrounding this. The summer spent writing my thesis with the supervision of Dr Miakinkov was the perfect example of this as he taught me how to write this in a way that would teach me to prepare for PhD-level work and what I should expect; his level of support and unrelenting enthusiasm/encouragement must be recognised and deserved to be highlighted.