Curiosity for languages and distant cultures has shaped Dylan Browne-Wilkinson’s journey from London to Bristol, The Hague, Shanghai, and Rome. At 28, he is now pursuing journalism in Italy with the dream of becoming a correspondent. His path mirrors that of a generation shaped by Erasmus exchanges, international studies and mobility, constantly building bridges between languages and cultures.
Ten years ago, Dylan Browne-Wilkinson was in Bristol, finishing school and unaware of the direction his life was about to take. To be precise, he was not born there but spent a good part of his life in that small city. Originally from London, he lived there for ten years, until his family decided that it was time for a change. “London was not a nice place to live in anymore,” he recalls. “Bristol was a good compromise between the countryside and a huge capital.” This choice proved to be the right one since, for him, growing up there was fun and made him feel like he belonged to the city.
Dylan has always been passionate about music – he plays guitar – and about literature. Books like Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns have shaped his way of looking at social and political issues, showing how the same country can be experienced so differently through the eyes of a man and a woman.
Among his passions there are also languages, a constant thread in his journey, which eventually brought him closer to Italy.
This perfectly explains why, after high school ended, Dylan moved to The Hague, Netherlands, to study International Studies at Leiden University with a focus on East Asia. The program he followed gave him the possibility to have a multidisciplinary approach to studies, going from history and culture to politics and economics. He also got the opportunity to study another language, Mandarin Chinese, practiced during his six-month Erasmus stay in Shanghai.
Back from Shanghai, Dylan concluded his studies in 2019 and started an internship in The Hague right away. He was looking for something casual as a bridge towards something more serious. Unfortunately, the pandemic came along at the exact point he was joining the job market. This led him to go back to the United Kingdom and work at his dad’s business for two and a half years. Afterwards, he joined a startup where he focused on grant writing, drafting funding proposals and applications for projects.
His relationship with Italy is unique and plays a crucial role in its journey towards the Luiss School of Journalism. When he was in The Hague he met a lot of Italians and says that he had “a great time with them”. During the last years he has been studying Italian outside of Italy, and he is still willing to earn fluency. The remote work gave him the opportunity to consider coming here and joining the Master in Journalism and Multimedia Communication. He has a strong record in technical writing because of his job and has a clear vision of his next steps: “ I want to expand my skill set through the course’s different topics, from video editing to podcasting.”
When asked “where do you see yourself in ten years from now?” he hesitated for a second, but that sparkling light immediately returned to his eyes when he said “I want to continue traveling as much as possible, access culture through language, whether this means perfecting my Italian or going to other countries being a correspondent.” This determination makes it easy to imagine Dylan, a few years from now, telling stories from the other corner of the world.
