For the Class of 2021
Congratulations to one of the most determined and thoughtful Finalist groups we've ever taught in our department. We'll always remember you as the last group we worked with in our historic Humanities Building, and as a community that supported each other and gave us hope and cheer online and in person. Take care of yourselves, keep in touch - and have a break! With best wishes
Emma Mason, Head of Department
Many congratulations to you all. It's been great teaching you over the last three (in some cases four) years. When the world was growing oppressively weird over the last year, our seminars felt like a happy refuge where we could remember the world before, and begin to think about the world after. Thanks for brightening my life, welcome to the world after!
Paul Botley, Deputy Head of Department
Many congratulations from all of us in the English Office - we're proud of you all and wish you all the best for the future!
The English Office team
Huge congratulations to the class of 2021 – what amazing resilience and determination you’ve demonstrated to successfully complete your degrees in such extraordinary times. Thank you again to those of you who also participated in Transformations at some point during your time in the department. Your commitment to making a difference to the children in our local community is very much appreciated by the children, the schools and all of us in ECLS. With best wishes for a happy, healthy and successful future
Charlotte Pearce
Congratulations on these results - what an impressive achievement in such a difficult year. Thank you all so much for your hard work; it has been a real pleasure to get to know you and I’ve been blown away by some of the essays and dissertations I’ve read! I hope you’re able to enjoy the summer and I wish you every success for the future.
Caitlin Vandertop
Well done to all of you on your fantastic work! It has been an honour to witness your continued intellectual and creative energy, your dedication and resilience, and your generosity to one another during this exceptionally difficult year. You all have so much to take pride in and to offer the world, and I wish you all the very best with whatever comes next.
Sarah Wood
Congratulations, all Finalists! I’m so sorry not to be able to celebrate with all of you, notably my tutees and all the students I’ve taught both this year and in the past. But rest assured I’m thinking of you all the same! I’m always delighted to get news from former students so you should always feel free to email, but this year above all, please do drop a line if you’re so inclined. With Warm Wishes
Dan Katz
Massive congratulations. Who could have imagined all the drama that would get packed into your time at university? Who could have known that we wouldn’t just be wearing masks for our seminars on Greek tragic theatre? Thank you for teaching me -- and keeping us all going -- with your brilliant insights, your creativity, and your steady good humour. Hope you’re celebrating with Bacchic abandon.
Matt Franks
Many congratulations to all graduating this year – you have all worked so hard and achieved so much, I am so proud of you!
Roxanne Douglas
Hearty congratulations to all our graduates -- and a special thank you to those who took my Literature and Empire module. It was a real pleasure teaching you! Best wishes for the future
John Gilmore
Congratulations, and well done!
Jonathan Skinner
Wishing everyone a happy and successful future. It has been a pleasure to work with you!
Ross Forman
Rochelle Sibley
Congratulations! Well done everybody during a very difficult year and wishing you all best of luck for the future-
David Grundy
I would like to congratulate all finalists: completing a degree during a global pandemic is a particularly impressive achievement, and one that I am certain will stand you in good stead moving forwards. Since starting at Warwick in September, I’ve had the absolute pleasure of working with some of you on the Remaking Shakespeare module; consistently, our seminars were a highlight of my working week, and I am so proud of everyone’s commitment to keep showing up and studying, regardless of what else was going on in the world. Best of luck for this next chapter in your lives.
Ursula Clayton
Dear Finalists, I cannot tell you how impressed I am with each and every one of you for getting through this terribly difficult year. What you have achieved will only sink in for you with time. I have missed our classes and conversations on campus. But your virtual presence helped me survive. Thanks for everything and travel well in the world.
Pablo Mukherjee
Congratulations on your degree, and well done for getting through in very difficult circumstances
Michael Gardiner
Congratulations! I hope that now you're graduating you still love the books that made you want to study literature in the first place, and that over the course of your degree you've discovered many more books that will stay with you in the years to come. Well done for all that you've achieved.
Stacey McDowell
Congratulations to all our graduates, and a special shout out from me to this year's Shakespeareans. In a year that challenged you in unimaginable ways, you produced some of the liveliest, most thoughtful, creative and best researched, written and performed work I've ever had the pleasure to read on this module. For the future, Shakespeare is in your capable hands. Make the best of him -- and you! As Elbow instructs: 'Thou art to continue!' And keep in touch. I'll be looking out for you.
Carol Rutter
To all of our fabulous finalists – those I had the privilege to meet and teach, and those I was unfortunate not to cross paths with. What a year to be graduating. Personally and academically, many of you will have experienced and suffered from losses, disappointments, and sadness, but amongst all of that there will have been those moments of absolute joy and great success – and you graduating is a key part of that latter category: For you, and for us in the ECLS department. We are so proud of your resilience and your commitment (whatever it looked like) within and without the classroom (physical and virtual!) and wish you all the best in whatever comes next. Remember to keep in touch – one of the greatest privileges we have as your lecturers is knowing where life took you afterwards. Very best,
Jen Baker
Congratulations for graduating in this most difficult of years, and best of luck for the future!
Harry Warwick
Let me start by congratulating you all for all your achievements, your creativity, your intellectual curiosity, and your endurance. If all graduating classes can be said, in one way or another, to be special, both unique and path-breaking and yet part of a long tradition, yours is all that and more. Because, unlike other graduating classes before you, for a long time now, you have had to endure, both individually and collectively, immense hardships that were thrown in your way. For one, the pandemic that has been gripping the world in its devastating power has wreaked a level of devastation hardly imaginable by anyone in our part of the world for at least half a century. And if that were not enough, the deep rifts in our society, the mounting dissatisfaction, the increased state of precarity, and the rapidly growing threat from ecological disaster, have all combined to make you feel, perhaps, more than any recent generation, that ‘the time is out of joint’. And yet you have endured. And yet you have shown us all, not only the radiance of your individual lives, your hopes for the future, and your commitment to what brings us together: our love of literature, of art, of the immense reservoir of resistance to catastrophe that our studies entail. Time and again this year I have been surprised at your resilience even when facing, as so many of you did, extreme disturbances. The pleasure of having known you, even if fleetingly, of having been given to share in the richness of your enthusiasm and joy, is only matched by the deep recognition of how much harder you have had to work this year and without so many of the little pleasures that make academic life great. As we reach the point in which you will go forward to grace society with all the future you embody, let me wish you much success and hope you will always feel part of this community that you have enriched and developed in the past few years. And that you may have a good summer too.
Paulo de Medeiros
Stephen Shapiro
You are the most stellar group of students to have completed the BA degree for you have demonstrated not only academic excellence but also great resilience, focus and commitment in the face of extraordinary circumstances. The batch of 2021 will be etched in our memories forever. May you go on to fulfil all your dreams, for yourself and for those who need your hand. Many congratulations on your graduation!
Rashmi Varma
Natalya Din-Kariuki
Congratulations! A real achievement after a punishingly difficult year - you should feel proud of the excellent collaborative work, learning and writing achieved despite this. With warmest wishes for the future.