Having travelled and lived in a range of countries growing up, there was one constant for me and that was – schooling. My deep set love for learning has seen me through my earliest years and has still never left me. Netflix has yet to run dry of documentaries I want to digest and there is no end to the TED Talk archive that I want to devour. I find learning to be one of the most stimulating things at any age or level.

It is this desire to learn that has predominately led me to Stirling University for the MLitt Publishing masters. Having taken an internship at a publishing house in Glasgow, I decided it was the best next-step to take. It’s been such a satisfying course to embark on, primarily because of the direct link it has to the publishing industry. The course is well thought out and serves to mimic scenarios that would seem to appear in a professional setting. Assignments and tasks are set to establish skills to help navigate through certain aspects of the publishing industry. It’s this aspect that really piques my interest because it’s so encouraging learning something that is directly applicable to ‘real-life’ situations.

After completing my English Literature degree at Glasgow University and prior to coming to Stirling, my husband’s work took us to Portland, Oregon. The impression I got whilst living in Portland, was that it seemed to be the epicentre for design. This sparked my curiosity and interest, particularly in relation to communication design. The amount of visual expression throughout the city and amongst new found friends, was fascinating to learn about. One aspect of the course that I’m really enjoying, is the lessons given in InDesign and Photoshop. The level of detail involved brings such a satisfying element to the processes and techniques we’re beginning to understand.

The publishing industry is seemingly vast and dynamic. It proves to be an industry that is constantly evolving and is creative at its core. I’m eager to enter the field and continue my learning. The production, design or marketing side of the industry have caught my attention,  though, the more I learn about the intricacies of the differing roles within publishing, the more open I find myself becoming. I am absolutely thrilled to be studying such a varied and dynamic industry, and with each passing week I seem to be even more taken with a different aspect of it.

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I am very fond of travelling, of discovering a new culture and a new way of thinking. Sometimes, I just observe people and I see what they want to do or who they want to be. So, one of the best way for me to get into culture and to develop my critical thinking is to read books. As an editor, you take part in someone’s dream and you have to meliorate it and to think how their book can interest someone else.

After my A-level in France, I searched what I wanted to do and I found my life’s passion: working in publishing and books. I did my bachelor’s degree in publishing at Paris-Descartes University. I developed my skills in digital publishing and made different internships in bookshops and in indie publishing houses. I am particularly interested in South American literature. That is why I made an internship in a publishing house in Buenos Aires. I learned a lot from this experience and I can speak fluent Spanish.

Thanks to that I made an apprenticeship last year in Nathan, a publishing house in Paris, working at the Spanish methods department. I made some copy-editing in French and Spanish, proofreading, iconography researches and I was in charge of the rights for the texts and images of two textbooks. I really enjoyed getting in touch with literary agents, sending contracts and respecting the copyrights. It was really interesting and I realized that to follow my dreams and create my own publishing house specialized in translated fiction, I should improve my English. I chose Stirling University because I wanted to discover the Scottish culture and develop my skills in publishing. I am very passionate about the classes and I really want to work in this sector.

If you are interested in my work, you can have a look at my Linkedin profile.

Hi, I am Yuehan Chen, you can also call me Hannah.

I come from the city of Chengdu in China, the hometown of pandas and spicy hotpot. I have loved reading since I was a little girl. Bertrand Russell once said: “There are two motives for reading a book: one that you enjoy it; the other that you can boast about it”, and mine is the former. I really enjoy the time when I immerse myself in the world of words, which brings me peace and pleasure. Gradually, I began to think about that what a mystery the word is and how these words are printed and published. And because I wanted to figure out the secret of words, my interest in Publishing grew and grew. Therefore, in February 2016 I started to teach myself the basics of publishing. I choose to study this course in Stirling University in order to get a more comprehensive understanding of publishing and put the publishing knowledge I have learned into practice.

When I was an undergraduate I worked as the Vice Chairman and Outreach Minister of the Students Union, and I gained many experiences from it that I think can be applied to publishing such as organising a program of events, how to apply for sponsorship and how to save money, which I think is important in publishing. I studied Applied Psychology in Nanjing for four years – it was interesting and I really enjoyed it. But after four years,  I found that the more Chinese psychology books I read, the fewer  options I had for what to read next, as there are not so many psychology textbooks written in Chinese. After graduating from Stirling I want to produce more high quality Chinese psychology textbooks or magazines, and since I am really interested in book design now, maybe I will do some psychology textbook translation or design in the future.

You can find me on

instagram@hannahhh08

Twitter@yuehan_chen

Hi, my name is Shangbin Qu, you can also call me Annie.  I am currently studying  Publishing Studies course at University of Stirling. I graduated from University of Stirling and Heibei Normal University with 2:1 BA joint degree in Translation and Interpreting.

This is my second year at Stirling. I didn’t change locations for Master studies because I really enjoy in life here, people are so friendly and the campus is beautiful.

From January 2017, I started to take the job as Chinese Student Ambassador at the international office, mainly to help the recruitment manager towards China applications, and a major part of my job is to operate and manage the Wechat public account for Stirling University, which is a widely-used app among Chinese.  By doing this, I known about e-publishing and  interested in publishing studies.

I hope my future career could deal with copyright management, or publishing relating to photo or fashion field.

As most people studying on my course at Stirling, I’m hoping turn my passion for books into a job in publishing. This brilliant idea first occurred to me during my undergraduate course (Mediterranean Civilisation at the University of Warsaw in Poland), when I was attending some basic editing classes. However, I chose not to give up cultural studies and to carry on with a postgraduate degree in the same area. In the meantime, to become acquainted with the publishing world, I attended a one-year postgraduate course in editing and publishing at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Thanks to the skills I acquired there I was able to start working as an editorial assistant in an academic journal at the Institute of Sociology (University of Warsaw). I have also done some proofreading for the Warsaw University Press.

My publishing ambitions are centred around academic books. For a lot of my peers this doesn’t seem to be the most thrilling part of the industry, but for me this is where the most important work is done. Already during my first year at the the university I felt that after graduating I would really miss being up to date with all that exciting research going on in the humanities. The problem was that the perspective of becoming an academic seemed a bit daunting to me – I didn’t want to spend my life separated from the rest of the world by the thick university walls. Then one summer day it dawned on me that by working in academic publishing I could have the best of both worlds – I could have a “real” job and at the same be involved in the process of developing new knowledge!

The first few weeks of the publishing course here at Stirling have definitely showed me that there is much more to publishing books than just copy-editing. What’s more important, they convinced me that with enough determination I too will soon be a professional publisher.

You can find me on Twitter.