Career Opportunities - German, Russian and Swedish
Graduates of the Bachelor of Arts who have majored in German, Swedish or Russian Studies have found employment in for example teaching, public service, overseas representation and foreign firms represented in Australia.
In addition, many students choose to embark upon combined degree programs, and have found that the study of a foreign language such as German, Swedish or Russian enhances their prospects of employment in any area that has links with the global community.
For graduates of German
The following testimony of recent students shows how language skills in German can help establish a career in other fields of endeavour:
Chris Berkhout
IT Consultant
In 2003, I spent an exchange semester at Freie Universität Berlin, completing a major in German as part of my Diploma in Modern Languages. Two years later I graduated from my engineering degree and returned to Berlin for a year, this time working in a German software company.
In 2007 I began work in Melbourne as an IT consultant in the telecommunications industry. After a year and a half on various projects I decided to return to Europe to improve my Russian and pursue other interests.
That ultimately led me back to Berlin, and to my most recent professional work, as a trainer and network administrator for the construction of an IT training center for the National Police in Herat, Afghanistan. Improving the communication capabilities of the Afghan National Police is an important part of building security in the country. Our project, financed by the German Federal Foreign Office, addressed the issue of well-trained staff being scarcer than communications and computing hardware. Germany has a long history of supporting Afghanistan, and is very involved in the current efforts to develop its police force. After two months of preparation in Berlin, I spent another two months in Afghanistan working with 3 others from Germany and our various Afghan partners. Our pilot project was a great success and is currently being expanded to elsewhere in Afghanistan.
Although language has not been the focus of my work, learning German was one of the most important parts of my education. It has opened doors to many valuable personal and professional opportunities and experiences, both in Germany and elsewhere.
Kirsty Bradbeer
Kirsty completed her Bachelor of Arts with Honours in German in 1998. She wrote her Honours thesis on the Role of the Church in the Collapse of Communism in East Germany. She was selected for a graduate position in the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs in 1999, where she currently manages the Student Liason and Monitoring Unit, working with international students and education providers.
In 2005 Kirsty will commence a 3 year posting to the Australian Embassy in Berlin, where she will work as a senior migration officer. Kirsty'd German Studies degree has enabled her to gain employment in this dynamic, intercultural context.
Kiera Dingle
Kiera completed a Bachelor of Arts/Law with an Arts major in German Studies in 2004. Kiera received a scholarship from the University of Melbourne to study at Ludwig Maximillians University in Munich in 2000 where she worked in hospitality and radio. Kiera returned to Germany in 2002 and taught English and collaborated on a US/German documentary film.
Since then, Kiera has further honed her radio skills at SBS, broadcasting a weekly show in German in 2003 as part of the Youth Radio team. In 2004 she joined the ConFusion team at SBS radio giving artistic expression to the experiences of second and third generation Australians.
Kiera says that her German Studies major "has greatly influenced my working history and perhaps my working future! In particular the opportunity to study and work overseas was of great importancce to me."
Andrew Muirhead,
Hamburg, Germany
"I began studying Electronics Engineering at the RMIT University in 1988 and completed my Honours Degree specialising in Avionics at the end of 1992. During my degree, I spent two years studying German at the University of Melbourne as a welcome addition to the daily dose of Mathematics, Electronics and Physics.
I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to build on the German, which I had learnt at school, in particular, the emphasis placed on a balance between conversation, literature and grammar.
Through the support of the German Section I gained a Praktikum place at Deutsche Lufthansa AG in Hamburg in the Avionics Engineering Department. I spent just under nine months at Lufthansa on what was one of the most rewarding and satisfying experiences during my University days.
At Lufthansa I was exposed to all aspects of the aircraft maintenance and overhaul operation and was able to put the two years of German at University into full practice. On my return to Australia, I was unfortunately unable to continue with German, due to the heavy course load I had at RMIT.
At the end of my degree, I returned to Germany and gained employment with Andersen Consulting Unternehmens-Beratung GmbH in Hamburg, where I worked for just over 2.5 years in their Airline and Railway Group.
At the start of 1997, I was offered a job at Lufthansa Technik AG in Hamburg in the Avionics Development Group".
Grantley McDonald
After studying German at secondary school (and loving it!), I continued at the University of Melbourne , along with Latin and Italian. At Uni I was exposed to an impressively broad range of German literature, from Goethe and Wieland to Kafka, Brecht and Christa Wolf, and had a chance to 'live' this literature with the Germanic Players.
I had been interested in the idea of influence and tradition in literature for a long time, and accordingly wrote my Honours thesis on the way in which motifs from a mediaeval French romance emerge in the Grimms' collection of folk tales.
I began a Masters thesis in the German Dept. at Melbourne on the way Martin Luther's approach to rhythm in poetry and music was affected by his knowledge of Latin and Greek; realising that the scope of the topic was broader than I had anticipated, and included a lot of philosophical issues I hadn't originally considered, I converted to PhD and transferred to the Faculty of Music in order to benefit from a different approach to the technical aspects of the thesis.
During my postgraduate research I spent a year in Berlin researching and absorbing something of an entirely different approach to academic work; and a blissful two months in the Ducal library at Wolfenbüttel (Niedersachsen), one of the most important collections of early Protestant literature and musical sources in Germany.
Without the solid grounding in German I received at Melbourne, none of this would have been possible. Along the way I have also been active as a performer of baroque vocal music, including Bach and Telemann. The training I received in the rhetoric of 18th-century German texts in seminars at Melbourne has been of inestimable value in making this music come alive. To anyone interested in the heritage of European history, literature and music, German is a must!
For graduates of Russian
Studying a language like Russian is a useful discipline in its own right which demands from the learner a high degree of application and mental organisation, and graduates of Russian are well respected by prospective employers for this ability. When combined with another area of study, Russian gives a CV an added bonus as something different and challenging. Graduates majoring in Russian generally go on to high achieving careers in public service, teaching, the media, the theatre, diplomacy, tourism, academia, teaching, translating, interpreting, law and business.
Emma Gilligan
Phd University of Melbourne
Studying Russian at Melbourne was perhaps one of the more challenging
decisions I've taken. The first hurdle was to let go of any expectations
one might have had about learning a language. Learning to read and
write with the Cyrillic alphabet was an exciting journey and most rewarding
once mastered.
I first visited St Petersburg in 1993 with a Melbourne University
Language Scholarship. The city, known as the Venice of the North is
truly beautiful and reminiscent of all the great Russian Literature.
Since then, I have lived in Moscow for the past five years where I
completed a doctoral dissertation on human rights reform since the
collapse of the Soviet Union to be published in 2003.
During that time, I worked for the Andrei Sakharov Foundation
as Development Manager. The Foundation raised money for the victims
of the war in Chechnya, for community initiatives in Moscow and
regional Russia to strengthen civil society. It was a challenging
position in which I learnt the skills of proposal writing, and
negotiating with the UN (Centre for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs) The World Health Organisation and Doctors Without Borders.
Learning another language is also about exploring another aspect
of your own personality. It can bring you into contact with some very
unusual and interesting people. Russia is a place full of character
and that is often reflected in its language. Pursuing Russian has allowed
me greater insight into that.