Meet Celie

Master of Laws (LLM), ANU Law School

For Celie, it was always going to be law. In her first year of practice, she began thinking about her next degree. She wanted to build on her Bachelor of Laws and Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice while the knowledge was still fresh.

“I knew that I wanted to try and enrol and complete a Master of Laws soon after I finished my undergraduate degree,” she says, “so it wouldn’t be too much of a shock to my system going back to study.”

Celie began her Master of Laws at ANU in 2022 while working full-time. One of her favourite and most challenging courses was Corporate Insolvency, taught by an experienced barrister from Victoria.

She graduated in 2023, specialising in Private Commercial Law. Today, she works as an associate in commercial litigation and uses what she learned at ANU when working on complex cases.

“ANU has opened up career opportunities for me that probably wouldn’t have come my way if I hadn’t done studied here.”

For Celie, postgraduate study was a natural next step: building on her undergraduate law degree and early career while deepening her expertise.

Meet Suhaib

Master of Marketing Management, ANU College of Business and Economics

Suhaib’s journey began like many others – by following the advice of those closest to him. Unsure of what he wanted to do after high school, his family recommended he study civil engineering for his undergraduate degree. But in Suhaib’s words: “My heart just wasn’t in it”.

At uni, Suhaib joined a student-run not-for-profit group as a volunteer and eventually became its president. There, he discovered a knack for communications and design, skills that would go on to shape his career.

Near the end of his degree, he started an internship at a small marketing agency. When he applied for a Masters at ANU, he admits, “my academic transcript wasn't exactly the best, but my Statement of Purpose is where I shone”.

Suhaib moved from India to Australia in 2018 to study the Master of Marketing Management. After several years in the industry, he wanted to get to the bottom of why communications worked and what made audiences engage. The degree helped him connect the dots between what he’d learned on the job and the ideas and strategy behind marketing.

He graduated in 2020. Today, Suhaib is Deputy Manager of Student Communications at ANU, where he leads a small team supporting students from their first welcome email through to graduation.

Sometimes postgraduate study can take you in a completely new direction from your undergraduate degree.

Meet Sophie

Master of Museum and Heritage Studies, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences

Sometimes postgraduate study starts with a leap of faith. After wrapping up her Bachelor of Arts at ANU in 2020, Sophie wanted to find out if a museum career was really for her.

So, in 2021, she gave the Master of Museum and Heritage Studies a go. Before long, she’d “completely fallen in love with the museum world”.

The degree mixed practical skills such as exhibition design and collections management, with bigger questions about museums, heritage and society. Together, they set her up for the work she does today.

She graduated in 2022 and now she’s Exhibitions Team Leader at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Her days are spent developing temporary exhibitions and keeping the permanent galleries fresh by updating objects and displays.

“My study really opened the door to the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector,” she says. “It helped me understand what was possible and gave me the foundation to help me zero in on the exact area I wanted to work in.”

Sophie’s step into museum studies helped her find her place in the exibitions and heritage sector.

Meet Tom

Doctor of Philosophy, International, Political and Strategic Studies, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs

There’s no deadline on postgraduate study. Just ask Tom, who finished his undergrad in 1999 and kicked off his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) at ANU 17 years later.

He began his PhD in International, Political and Strategic Studies part-time in 2016, fitting it around his career in the Australian Defence Force (ADF). Tom graduated in 2026, and his decade-long journey is proof that worthwhile research takes time. When it comes to a PhD, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Tom says his study into the 2003 Iraq war made him “a far more effective military planner and strategic advisor, with a deeper understanding of war and the gravity of decision-making”.

There is no single timeline for postgraduate study, especially when research runs alongside balancing work and life.

Ready for what’s next?

Together, these stories show us there is never a single reason to pursue postgraduate study, or one set path for you to follow. You might deepen your knowledge, explore a new field or take your career in a different direction.