'It sort of sealed the deal ...'


After experiencing life as a news writer and in public relations, Ashley Keir-Bucknall decided to explore PR further by doing a master’s - and, thanks to the Vice-Chancellor’s 2020 Scholarship, she was able to return to De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) to do it. 

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In her final year studying for her first degree, a Journalism BA at DMU, Ashley began reframing her career options. She said: “I was pretty certain that I wanted to be a journalist for a B2B magazine. But as time went on I began to think that it would be more interesting and fun to be the person who was creating the stories.”

Ashley decided that the best way to make up her mind would be to actually do the jobs in question. After she graduated, she set about arranging internships and the first saw her working for a company that organised conferences linked to the Rio Olympics. Next came a placement as an editorial assistant with the respected Communicate Magazine, where Ashley worked on campaign awards booklet.

She said: “It sort of sealed the deal. I was more interested in understanding how the campaigns had been developed than writing about them.”
Ashley began looking for universities that offered the course that would give her the best prospects - but the costs put her off. Then she got an email from a friend telling her about the Vice-Chancellor’s 2020 Scholarship.

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The Vice-Chancellor’s 2020 Scholarship offers a tuition fee discount of up to 50 per cent on selected full-time and part-time postgraduate courses. Based on academic achievement and merit, it is automatically applied to all home and EU graduates who achieve a 2:1 or higher and who are graduating or have graduated within the past two years. Individual faculties may also set their own eligibility criteria, terms and conditions.

Ashley started the Advertising and Public Relations Management MSc, expanding her skills, using new knowledge and building her personal brand. She came second in a national blogging competition for PR students and her name was put forward to the BBC because of her political campaign analysis – her dissertation examines how politicians use social media.

Posted on Monday 29 June 2015

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