As part of the DEN International Student Conference, students from Westminster International University in Tashkent share their experiences, perspectives, and expectations as they prepare to engage with peers in London. In this short profile, Mekhrangiz Khoshimova, a Business Management student at WIUT, introduces herself, reflects on her studies, and shares her aspirations ahead of her...
Cinema has always been more than just entertainment. At its best, cinema serves as a powerful medium for telling human stories, illuminating the tensions, hopes, and contradictions that define societies. Few artists embody the connection between film and social reflection as clearly as Niki Karimi, one of the most internationally recognised figures in Iranian cinema....
Am I willing to fight for my country? I don’t know, however, for now I have a choice. Whereas 18-year-olds born one year after me, in 2008, don’t have this freedom to decide for themselves. That is because the German government is debating about reinstating mandatory military service for men, starting this year, with a...
This interview is part of the Democratic Education Network’s online magazine and forthcoming book, Transforming Education: Innovation for Sustainability in the AI Era. It centres student voices and lived experience as vital forms of knowledge in shaping more just, democratic, and inclusive education systems.In this conversation, we discuss how ethnicity, culture, and migration affect education....
In December, I had the privilege of travelling to Thailand with students from Westminster University. I wrote a previous blog describing how excited I was to experience every small aspect of this trip, and it certainly taught me things that will make me a better person. This journey marked the beginning of many personal reflections....
Having taught for over thirty years, I have long believed, much like Paulo Freire, that education rarely transforms the lives of learners when it is confined to the classroom. I have never viewed education as a “banking model,” in which educators simply deposit information into passive students. Instead, I have always aimed to engage students...
My friend summed up our field trip perfectly when she said, ‘We lived as locals, not tourists.’ That is precisely what our ten days in Bangkok felt like. We stayed on the campus of Kasetsart University, which provided us with a genuine insight into the daily life of the students there. The university itself was...
This trip really opened my eyes in a way I could not have imagined. Being able to be in Thailand alongside my peers made the learning feel more active, shared, and way more engaging than abstract. Exploring unfamiliar places and encountering new cultural practices, the experience was intense but paced, allowing me to absorb and...
In the famous city of London, there lived a group of students not connected by much. They all led their own unique lives and were experiencing a relatively average University experience. Then, a man with a mission brought these students into something that can only be described as an epic daydream full of friendship, adventure,...
One of the first things that struck me whilst driving through Bangkok was not the heat or the little traffic, but the greenery. Although London was crowned as the “world’s first National Park City”, green spaces here often feel carefully designated and bounded by fences, in parks and woods, but for me, Thailand feels lush...
Where do I even begin? The trip I’ve been nonstop talking about since choosing this module has come and gone. Not only did it exceed my expectations in every way, but I have the people I shared this experience with to thank for that. It has provided me with integral life lessons that I will...
Thailand is a trip that’ll forever stay with me. Every single person I spent time with and made memories with on this trip holds a special place in my heart for their own beautiful reasons, including Farhang Morady and Kyoko Murakami. I’ve acquired a new family into my life, and I couldn’t be any more...