Alumni Corner: An Interview with Amelia Hacon

By Joshua Jones

To begin, please introduce yourself to our readers and your journey to where you are today.

Hello, my name is Amelia Hacon and I am a Senior Policy Adviser for the UK Government. I joined European Horizons in 2021 as a Deputy Director of Policy, which I did for one year before becoming Co-Director of Policy alongside Lorenzo (current Executive Director) the following academic year. I graduated from the University of Nottingham in 2021, where I studied Politics and Economics, after which I both joined European Horizons and started working for the UK Government around the same time.

What was your experience of European Horizons? What did you do and do you have a particular highlight from your time with the organization?

One particular highlight was in October 2022 when we had the European Horizons Policy Competition in Ghent, Belgium. It was my first big international event that we had hosted and people had come from all across Europe for the weekend. It was really great to come together with the people I had been working with for six months and meet them properly for the first time, and to get that sense of community of like-minded young people which I think EuH does so well at creating.

Following your time at European Horizons, what did you embark upon next? How did your experience at EuH shape this next step?

I was already working when I joined the Policy portfolio but one thing that really helped were the practical events, such as the policy memo masterclasses, crisis simulations, and the Policy Competition. They are really practical and quite directly related to what I do as a policy practitioner now. For example, being able to draft a policy memo or to put yourself in the shoes of a practitioner through a crisis simulation are directly transferable to my current role. So, I wouldn’t say it helped me get the job but it helped me in the job, which I would say is quite a unique benefit of European Horizons which you don’t necessarily get with other similar organisations.

Moving on to broader questions, what drew you into European and transatlantic affairs and European Horizons in particular?

During my undergraduate degree I was really interested in Britain’s relationship with Europe, which was changing because of Brexit and so it was very topical, and I like to take a macro top-down approach to things. I then came across European Horizons as something that appealed to that broader view, in terms of the transatlantic element. I think it’s a very natural partnership to consider Europe in conjunction with the US; I think it almost doesn’t make sense not to as there is a lot of scope for collaboration. So I was really interested in EuH for the subject matter and as a way to bring youth voice into that debate.

I think the walls to policy are very high. I think there are very few entry points for youth in these conversations but of course youth are going to inherit the policy decisions that we made before them. So, overall, it seemed like a good way to combine a lot of interests and a unique entry point into that field.

What interests you most in global affairs at the moment?

I would say China. I’m really interested in the study of the balance of power and to see how two world leaders, being Europe and the US, are responding to the rise of a third power. For example, I take note of where the EU and US are choosing to cooperate, where the differences are in their approaches, and what they’re looking at to determine their future relations with China.

To take a more pessimistic view, what worries you the most about the European and transatlantic world?

AI — 100%. There is a lot of application in terms of public policy; governments are having conversations about how AI can help us and what can we do to improve policymaking or by using AI. But at the same time it’s so frightening: the pace that AI is developing, the fact that it’s hardly regulated, that the technology is moving faster than the regulation (which is quite a unique and serious problem).

There clearly needs to be some kind of global coordinated response to AI; it’s not something governments can consider in isolation. So that’s something that I’m also watching out for: how are world leaders going to come together to deal with AI?

Could you tell us more about your role as a Policy Adviser at the UK Government and how this has led on from your last experiences?

As someone who didn’t get summer internships or grad schemes, EuH was a really nice way to get practical skills and knowledge that I could then use in applications to help me get a job. What was particularly helpful also was being on the Executive Board because it enabled me to think like a policy practitioner when we were planning our events. It was a great way to demonstrate that skill, where I didn’t have it before.

My approach to careers was to look at the job I wanted, look at the specification, and make an assessment of myself to see how far away I was from that ‘goal’ job. If I was lacking particular skills or knowledge, I then quite strategically sought after experiences that gave me those. One thing was policy knowledge. It’s hard to demonstrate that if you’re not working in policy — especially as a student — so organising events for EuH and being on the Executive Board in particular gave me the opportunity to not only tell but show someone that I knew about policy.

Lastly, what advice would you give to current EuH members and young professionals looking to enter the world of European and transatlantic affairs?

I was given a piece of advice really early on in my career, that in policy there is not one linear track for how your career will go. I used to think that my career profile would be a nice list of jobs that painted a very cohesive picture, so when I took my first job which didn’t align with that picture, I felt like I had ruined it from the get-go. But I have actually managed to reprofile some of that slightly less desirable experience to make it work for me and the trajectory that I want. That ties in to this idea of forging your own path and that it really is not a linear path. I think every job has benefits that you can take with you to the next one, and it’s really a matter how you decide to frame certain jobs or experiences which means that you can find them to be useful moving forward.

Joshua Jones is Publications Director at European Horizons and a recent graduate of University College London, where he studied History. His research interests include digital democracy, disinformation, and human rights.