Alumni - Alex Dyakowski, MA Publishing

I initially applied for the MA in Publishing course in 2009 after having spent a year or two working as an English teacher in Japan, and deciding that I needed to find an actual career to pursue. The course gave me an excellent grounding in the multiplicity of different areas of publishing, both within the industry as a whole and within the departments that make up any publishing company. This introduction has stood me in good stead over the five years or so that I have now worked in the industry and has allowed me to develop and take on new roles, about which I would otherwise have had no clue! ...

After graduating, I worked initially as a Research Assistant at Garnet Education, an independent ELT Publisher, before being promoted to Digital Media Editor where I had the opportunity to work on a wide range of learning materials for 5-year-olds right through to adults. From there, I got a job at OUP working for a few years as an Editor on apps within the ELT division. I have since moved on (and over, to academic publishing), working at Taylor & Francis where I am a Digital Product Manager responsible for our institutional ebook platform and helping to shape the digital strategy for the books division. The MA at Brookes is what made these exciting roles possible giving me the knowledge and confidence to tackle the varieties and vagaries of digital publishing at different stages and in different sectors.

The MA course at Brookes is also incredibly international and provides the opportunity to meet people from a huge range of cultures and countries, and to make fantastic friends from all over the world. I am still friends with a number of people from the course, visiting them in far flung places, and even playing in a now long-running 5-a-side football team.

Posted on 22 May 2015 around 9am