Security studies postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

My interest in security studies grew out of a dissertation that began with a fairly narrow question: why did people in one ward of my home town evacuate during a flood warning while people in a neighbouring ward stayed put? I had expected to write about infrastructure and drainage. Instead I spent most of my time reading council communication plans, Environment Agency public guidance and local newspaper coverage, and I ended up arguing that risk information had been distributed through channels that assumed a stable address, reliable internet access and confidence in dealing with officials. Where those assumptions did not hold, the warning system effectively did not exist. Writing it taught me that security is rarely only a question of capability; it is also a question of who is treated as part of the public being protected.

My undergraduate degree in Politics and International Relations gave me the grounding I want to build on. I took modules on conflict and intervention, comparative politics and research methods, and I was most engaged by the debates about what counts as a security issue in the first place. Reading Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver on securitisation gave me a vocabulary for something I had noticed in my dissertation interviews: the way a problem is named shapes which institutions are allowed to act on it. I also read parts of Rita Floyd's work on the ethics of securitisation, which pushed me to be more careful about treating the concept as purely descriptive. I would like to test these ideas against a wider range of cases than my degree allowed, particularly in areas such as critical infrastructure, cyber dependency and the governance of emergencies.

Since graduating I have worked full time in customer resolutions for a utility company. It is not a security role, but it has been unexpectedly relevant. I handle complaints about supply interruptions, billing errors and meter access, often from people who are frustrated and who have already been passed between departments. I have learned how large organisations lose information at handover points, how scripted communication fails when circumstances are unusual, and how quickly trust collapses when someone feels they are not being told the truth. When my team was briefed on identifying vulnerable customers during outages, I volunteered to help redraft our internal prompts, because the existing ones asked questions people were unlikely to answer honestly to a stranger on the phone. That experience makes me sceptical of resilience plans that look convincing on paper.

Outside work, I share the care of my younger brother, who is autistic, with my mother. Coordinating appointments, transport and school communication has made me organised and realistic about deadlines, and it has also shaped how I think about protection. Provisions designed for an average person often fail for him in predictable ways. I also volunteer with a community river-watch group, walking a stretch of the river after heavy rain, photographing blockages and reporting them. It is modest work, mostly cold and uneventful, but it has shown me how much local monitoring depends on a handful of willing residents and how fragile that arrangement is.

I am applying now because I want structured training in security theory and research design rather than the ad hoc reading I have managed around shift patterns. I am particularly keen to develop quantitative and documentary analysis skills so that a future dissertation on domestic resilience and public warning can rest on better evidence than my undergraduate work did. In the longer term I would like to work in emergency planning or resilience policy for a local authority or regulator, where the gap between written plans and lived experience is exactly where useful work is to be done.

Review this personal statement

Latest reviews