 I'm Ville Mayama and I come from Finland. Why did you decide to study IR here at King's? Studying international relations was a long time ambition for me. Why King's and why England? Basically because coming from Finland it's not very international. We're not a centre, we're not a global hub of diplomacy, NGOs and international organisations which London is very much so. Why King's? I did some extensive research on BA programmes in IR in England and Wales and Scotland as well. And this was the only degree that was built from scratch. So it has not developed over time. It doesn't have add-ons. It doesn't reflect some kind of competition of interest between professors and their academic faculties. It's been built to reflect the needs of what we do today in this world. So it's tailor-made to support the students to be able to engage in international relations today. And now you're in your second year. So your first year, what were your expectations met to some extent? What did you like about it? I think the strength of the programme in the first year was that you were told to do a wide selection of different topics. You did economics, you did history, you did theory. But you also did the practice side of things like conflict and diplomacy and contemporary security issues. So you get this wide understanding of different policy fields. And I think that's a good thing. I don't necessarily enjoy all those things. They're not my cup of tea. But now going to the second year, I do know what is my cup of tea. I do know what I want to focus on, what I want to specialise on and what I can maybe leave behind me a bit. So in a sense, first year was a really good year in terms of getting the basic understanding on the framework of international relations. What happens in economics? Why the relationships are what they are? Where do we come from, from the historical point of view? It doesn't say I want to get into that in more detail, but I need to have the basic understanding. Because otherwise it's just building on nothing. And now in the second year, what you've just said you have decided or know what you're interested in. So what are you interested in? Yes, this year, because I was able to build my degree as I wanted, apart from one core module, I decided to do more foreign policy focused modules. So I do statecraft and diplomacy, foreign policy analysis and war and global conflict. The picture I have built in my head is that, first of all, you need to understand where the foreign policy comes from. Well, that's where you need to know the situation and the actors in the country. That's the foreign policy analysis part of it. Then you need to understand how states do foreign policy. That's the statecraft and diplomacy. So when we have two different foreign policy objectives, how do they interact? And then maybe a bit cynically, if then they clash, what comes next is the war and global conflict. So this is the third part of my module choice. And global politics as an overarching team is very valuable addition, because that addresses all the other actors than states, because we do have other actors as well. It's very 18th century to, okay, 19th century to talk only about states. So we do need to take into account the non-state actors as well. When you think back at your first lecture experience or seminar experience, I mean, what was it like? Was it something you expected or how were your fellow students? Well, I don't have a university background in Finland, so it's difficult to compare. But what I've understood from my friends and colleagues, as they say, it's a more discussion-based culture here. So we don't go to the lectures just to receive information, but we're actually encouraged to question the lecturers, the professors. And there was a couple of occasions last year when I actually emailed after the lecture, like I found this thing out and I sent some material about what was said or whatever. And then they usually took it up and put it online to the other students so we can actually discuss within their whole module. And the seminars is also something that I'm not used to. And when I mentioned these weekly discussion groups, everyone in Finland was like, wow, why didn't we do that? I mean, that sounds really good. Because it really, if you're put in the front of the class and you're supposed to give a presentation on a certain topic, even if it's not marked or anything, because you want to succeed in front of your peers, you do the job well. You put more effort on that week because you know that you will be presenting. So there's a healthy kind of group pressure, I think. And I think that worked very well. Excellent. And you also, what student representative in your second year, how did this come about or what is it? For the first year I was acting as a student representative. And basically it means being the first point of contact with staff members in the department and my students from my year. Many students, especially because they have different cultural backgrounds and so on, and they might be fairly young when they come to university for the first time and in a new city and new country, they don't necessarily feel comfortable talking to staff members directly, especially if you have a fancy title in front of your name. Me being just another Facebook friend with a stupid profile picture and bad English, it's easier for them to come and talk to me. And then usually what I can do is to just point a person from the department and go and talk to this person. I cannot solve their problems, but I can tell who can. Anything on your piece of paper that you always wanted to tell the world? Yes. One clear advantage studying in King's in general is the location. It's one thing to study politics or international relations out there somewhere. It's another thing to study in London, which gives you an access to decision makers, to policy makers, to everything. And it's still another thing to study in King's in London, which gives you an access to this huge network of professional and academic alumni who come to King's to talk to you, who come to King's to teach you. We have a next number of lectures a week. If you add all the career events or academic events you have in addition to that lecture number, you have a double or a triple number of hours a week of teaching. And that's just because they are out there and you can go as a King's student, you have an access to all those things. You should. That's part of your degree. And when you think about, I mean, dream about the future, do you have any idea what you want to do afterwards? Before coming to King's, I was a huge fan of moving beyond nationalistic ideas and moving towards this global community of states and international community. During my first year, I think I got a bit more cynical about this. I think that the nation states are there to stay and maybe just have to work to develop how they work and how they interact. But maybe there's no way to move beyond them, at least maybe not during my lifetime. So working with states but not on the state level would be my ideal. Like working where the frictions are, where the state's interests are called like clash. That's the kind of, you know, a gap where I want to be. Whether that's in the United Nations or in the EU or in other regional organisations or between regional organisations which seems to be another trend. I think that's where I want to be in the 5-10 years.