Studying modern languages at the University of Leeds, Oliver is currently on placement year with an international haulier in Austria, where he has started learning French. A keen writer and linguist, his research interests include society, culture, economics and politics; having a paper accepted to a German language conference last year. He has previously worked as a translator with German and English writers on the Leeds:Dortmund 50 project, and he currently writes for and co-edits a university journal.
What do the likes Facebook and Twitter mean for the future of Western Democracy? Oliver Lawrie takes a critical look at the relationship between healthy democracy and social media as a tool for democratic emancipation, considering why social media does significantly more harm than it does good.
Oliver Lawrie looks at how our lack of knowledge of other languages will impede us in the post-Brexit world. “Fewer than 3,000 students sat A-level German in 2018. That’s about 5 percent of the number of people who would attend one average football match in the UK.”