Now a naturalised Belgian citizen, living and working to further environmental and social justice causes near to her heart in Brussels, Fran Gater (French Studies, 2001, Grizedale) marvels at the life she’s made there, after leaving home as a teenager to study in Lancaster.

Fran is now a skilled and seasoned communicator, working as strategic communications lead for ZOE Institute - a think tank which is working to push policy makers, economists and institutions at an EU level and to create a more sustainable economy and laws that are good for everyone - including for future generations.

She also works part-time as part of a training collective, helping new communications professionals arriving in Brussels to get up to speed with working at the EU level.

Reflecting on her undergraduate time, studying French at Lancaster, she says: “With hindsight, I would not have ended up living in Belgium if it had not been for Lancaster. It was not an easy time for me. I really struggled with anxiety - but the counselling and the medical service at the university were there to support me. I worry it’s even harder for young people these days.”

Brought up in Buckinghamshire, she felt the call of the north possibly because her father was born in Scotland and her mother came from Warrington. She gained her place at Lancaster through clearing – having missed out on the grades for her chosen course she was offered a place to study French. Coming from a small village, she was intimidated by the big city universities and the campus was an important part of her decision to go to Lancaster.

She liked French at school and was good at it, so throwing herself into her studies was an important part of settling in. “The course at Lancaster worked really well for me, because it was very flexible,” she remembers. “I had control over what I wanted to study. There were options and I leant towards political and social courses that were topics that interested me, but I just happened to be studying them in French.” She wrote her two dissertations on current affairs topics in France at the time – same-sex marriage and violence in schools.

In her second year Fran was overwhelmed at the thought of having to spend a year in France the next year. That was when she decided to get help from the university counselling and medical service: “The support it gave me was crucial. It was a huge deal for me to go abroad at that time, and Lancaster made it OK.”

She found herself teaching in a rural secondary school in Normandy, in front of a class of teenagers who had no desire to learn English. But she had Lancaster friends in Paris and often had what she calls “pinch yourself moments” as she took the train to meet them in the sophisticated capital. She enjoyed France so much that after leaving Lancaster she went back for six months, working in a tourist office in the Alps.

The seemingly unattainable had become a reality and Fran says she returned to university for her final year more confident, less anxious, having proved herself to herself and with more life experience.

She feels gratitude to Lancaster for helping her find my own way. “Lancaster was part of me figuring out the path I wanted to go on,” she explains. “It was not rigid - there was space to explore things and make the course work for you.”

Having rejected being a teacher or translator, she decided to move into communications after her finals, first of all with Bolton Council. Then after four years she wanted a change. The lure of the french language was strong, and she knew jobs were available in Brussels.

Her first visit to Brussels was for a job interview with Friends of the Earth Europe – an environmental charity she’d already volunteered with – and the second time was to move there to take up a job as Communications Officer, powered by her passion for social justice.

In her time at Friends of the Earth Europe Fran led communications campaigns on environmental protection, corporate power and democracy, liaising with Brussels journalists and building-up the organisation’s online presence.

In 2016 Fran was settled in Belgium when the UK government announced a referendum on staying in the EU. Fran felt she could not helplessly watch it unfold from a distance so took a sabbatical from Friends of the Earth to work for Member of the European Parliament Jean Lambert - whose platform was that the UK was ‘greener in’ Europe.

Fran threw herself into making the case for remaining in the EU, as she explains: “All the opportunities I had had to work abroad, learn a language, I would have to see being taken away from the next generation.”

She has vivid memories of staying up all night in the Green Party headquarters the night of the referendum, hearing that Sunderland had voted for Brexit, and starting to write the ‘other press release’ that she and her colleagues had not even wanted to contemplate, that the UK was leaving the EU.

Much of her time these days is spent working in climate change, which she admits can be tough. “Progress is very slow and things can even go backwards, which makes it hard to go on sometimes. These big global challenges can only be solved when countries work together - retreating into your nation is the wrong thing to do.”