We are always happy to welcome alumni and show you around your old campuses when you are travelling to London. Here, 2001 MA Marketing Communications alumna Pooja Nadkarni shares her experience visiting Westminster for her 50th birthday.
Some reunions reconnect us with people.
The rare ones reconnect us with the places that quietly shaped us, long before we understood their influence.
Twenty-five years after graduating, I returned to my alma mater, the University of Westminster.
In June 2026, while travelling through the UK with my mum to celebrate my 50th birthday, I knew this was one place I most definitely had to visit together.
Our morning began with a warm welcome from the Head of Alumni and External Engagement Laura Hughes. We got to know a little about each other over coffee before setting off to explore the campus.
As we walked through the Marylebone Campus, it started dawning on me that this visit was going to be different. The alumna in me wasn’t looking for memories – she was looking for origins.
I had returned to better understand the place that had quietly begun shaping the professional – and perhaps more importantly, the person – I have spent the last twenty-five years becoming.
The Marylebone Campus had changed in many ways. The open quadrangle I knew had become a bright covered space. The library and the halls of residence stood reassuringly familiar, while the old cafeteria had transformed into the Bloomberg Financial Markets Suite.
We spent time exploring the OPEN exhibition, wandering through the architecture studios and admiring the students’ work. The computer workspaces where I had once spent countless hours typing my coursework were now exhibition spaces. Standing there, I found myself watching the next generation begin its journey in spaces that had once witnessed the beginning of mine.
Walking through those spaces, I found myself noticing something unexpected. It wasn’t what had changed that held my attention. It was how naturally the old and the new seemed to coexist – rather like memory itself.
Next on the agenda was Zone29, Westminster’s careers and enterprise hub. It was exciting to see how the University continues to invest in the futures of its students. I couldn’t help but wonder how many careers, businesses and life-changing decisions would quietly begin there over the coming years.
We also met with Ibrahim Ifaaf, a graduate of BA Finance and Business Management who was working with the Alumni Office. It took me back to my experience working as a Student Ambassador for the HEFCE Programme with the University’s Education Liaison Office. Listening to him speak about his own Westminster journey reminded me that every generation adds another chapter to the same story.
We had a delightful surprise while wandering through the corridors of Zone29. Quite by chance we met Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Peter Bonfield; Professor Dibyesh Anand, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement and Employability; Professor Catherine O’Connor, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Education; and Ian Wilmot, University Secretary and Chief Operating Officer. Some encounters simply become part of the story without ever demanding centre stage.
Before leaving, I collected my Alumni Card – a small gesture, yet a very special moment that reminded me that while time moves on, some places never stop belonging to us.
For twenty-five years, I have carried Westminster with me as the university I attended. Little did I realise that I had been carrying a part of my origins with me all along.
And somehow, that made Westminster feel even more like home.
If you are an alumnus who would like to visit the University of Westminster, please email alumni@westminster.ac.uk.
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