About

Welcome to my website! I’m a freelance journalist who’s been published in The Guardian, The Telegraph, openDemocracy and elsewhere. I have an MA in journalism from City, University of London; prior to that, I studied music at Oriel College, Oxford. The purpose of this site is to collate all my journalistic projects and other writings.

Some of the older content on this site consists of work I did as part of my MA course, and/or from my time spent as Executive Editor of Oriel College’s newspaper The Poor Print for academic year 2016-17.

The site reflects my wide range of interests: some of the articles draw on my musical expertise, while others reflect my interests in politics. The format varies from satirical data-journalism to serious comment pieces. A complete list of all the content on this site, sorted by category, can be found here.

Shallow Dive

Shallow Dive is a weekly politics podcast, hosted by me and Murray Jones. Every week, we do an in-depth look at one big issue, round up a selection of stories that didn’t get enough attention, and debate a policy issue. Find all the episodes on my site here, or on Spotify here.

The Poor Print

As well as the content to be found on this site, I have also produced many collaborative pieces with classmates through Oriel College’s The Poor Print newspaper. As Executive Editor for academic year 2016-17, my role included:

• Planning future issues and the overall direction of the newspaper.
• Directing the design of a fortnightly print edition with a circulation of approximately 150.
• Managing a highly successful website and Facebook page.
• Commissioning & copy-editing articles.
• Promoting new issues and directing the design of promotional material.
• Managing finances.
• Writing fortnightly emails to call for submissions.

Over my tenure, I strove to improve the identity of the paper, moving it beyond a miscellany of Oriel College’s creativity and towards a publication with its own unique character. Among other things, this involved leading several special projects with The Poor Print‘s Editorial Team.

As part of Issue #15, themed around ‘Utopia’, I conceived and led  the ‘Stories of Oxford’ project. This involved interviewing four members of the Oxford homeless community, transcribing their interviews, and editing them into a form that we could publish on a special insert in The Poor Print. Our aim was to capture the voices of the people we were interviewing and represent them faithfully and objectively.

• Issue #15 – ‘Utopia’ – online.
• Issue #15 – ‘Utopia’ – in print:
  • Issue #15 – ‘Utopia’.
  • Issue #15 – ‘Utopia’ (‘Stories of Oxford’ insert).

As part of Issue #18 (themed around ‘Myth’), I  conceived, commissioned and edited a Poor Print special report on Cecil Rhodes, Rhodes Must Fall, and the statue at Oriel College. The report was entitled ‘The Myth of Rhodes’, and I also contributed one of the articles and carried out a large amount of additional research and fact-checking. The report was originally published on Friday, 28 April 2017, and Issue #18 as a whole was also designed in its entirety by me. The report consisted of six features (one of which was only online), plus a Complete Bibliography and a list of suggested Further Reading. The report can be read online in its entirety here; or alternatively, for links to the individual articles, see below:

• ‘The Myth of Rhodes: Editoriel‘ (Aidan Chivers).
• ‘Rhodes Must Fall: a Timeline‘ (Alex Waygood).
• ‘Rhodes: a Perspective‘ (Joanna Engle).
• ‘Putting Rhodes in His Place‘ (Alex Waygood).
• ‘Iconography Campaigns: a Global Perspective‘ (Emma Gilpin).
• ‘Safe Spaces and Student Protest‘ (Juliet Butcher – online only).
• ‘Complete Bibliography‘ (online only).
• ‘Cecil Rhodes and the Commemoration of the Past: Further Reading‘ (provided by Dr Ian Forrest – online only).

A pdf of Issue #18 in its entirety can be downloaded here.

Elsewhere on the web

• LinkedIn profile for my complete CV.
• In my spare time, I’m also a contributor to open-source Python projects — see my GitHub profile here.
• Soundcloud page for recordings of my musical compositions.
• Follow me on Twitter.