Looking back at the “London Maymester: The U.S., U.K., and World Order”

Throughout the month, students attended lectures including “The Foundations of British Foreign Policy: The Emergence and Dilemmas of a Superpower” and “Non-Western Perspectives on Global Order” with Dr. Maeve Ryan, “Britain at the end of the Second World War – The End of Empire and the Power Transfer between the US and the UK” with Prof. Niall Barr and “Small States navigating the Challenges of the International Order” with Dr. Hillary Briffa.

The cohort took several day trips throughout the program. In Cambridge, they toured the campus, attended a lecture on “The US, UK and the European Order, 1945-2022” with Professor Brendan Simms, and visited the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial. In Dover, the group toured the castle and tunnels and learned about Operation Dynamo, the rescue of allied troops out of Dunkirk implemented by the Royal Navy, and visited the Battle of Britain Memorial and Museum. The group also spent one afternoon at Bletchley Park, the home of Britain’s World War II codebreakers, where they learned about intelligence gathering, decoding and translating.

The Maymester also included several overnight trips, including a long weekend in Normandy and an overnight trip to Oxford. In Normandy, the students visited Omaha Beach to commemorate the 78^th anniversary of D-Day and learn about this pivotal moment in history firsthand. They visited the drop zones of the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions near Sainte Mère-Église, Pointe Du Hoc, Arromanches and the Pegasus Bridge and Ranville War Cemetery, and Dunkirk. In Oxford, the students attended several lectures and toured Blenheim Palace and the Christ Church memorial gardens.

Our students also made the most of their time in London. They toured St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey and visited the Imperial War Museum, the Churchill War Rooms and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

See more photos on our Flickr page!