The best in Europe – now for global domination!

A recent Law School graduate is the ‘best in Europe’ in the world’s leading academic awards programme that recognises innovation and excellence at undergraduate level.

Matthew Platts, who completed his Law degree with The Open University in four years while working full-time, submitted what was judged to be the best paper from any student across Europe in the Law category in the Undergraduate Awards. As a regional winner, he had been invited for a three-day trip to Dublin in Ireland next week (Monday 12 – Wednesday 14 November) where the top paper will be unveiled as the UA Global Winner.

I have long been interested in comparative social systems, especially the comparison of authoritarian and totalitarian states with liberal democracies. I therefore relished the opportunity to write my paper, ‘Pathos as Policy: The Pathos Mode of Rhetoric in the Law of the Third Reich’ which won the prize. I intend to expand my winning paper into a PhD project in which the technology of sentiment analysis is used with the written legal instruments of historic and modern authoritarian states to identify relationships between rhetoric and oppression. I’m grateful for the opportunity the OU has provided to work on this project so far. The OU is a truly magnificent institution, which democratises academia and provides large numbers of working people the opportunity to explore a wide range of subjects.

Matthew Platts
OU Law Graduate