Christian Werthschulte
(Re)-Collecting Europe: Journalism Residency 2019

Christian Werthschulte was one the journalists-in-residence in 2019. Against the backdrop of the UK’s departure from the EU, Werthschulte examined the social and cultural impact of Brexit on the civil society in the UK. At the beginning, the journalist stayed at the Goethe-Institut London for a week, before embarking on his journey through the UK.
 

Christian Werthschulte returned to Rochdale to research why his former adoptive home town in England voted “Leave” in the 2016 referendum. Fifteen years ago, he worked at a comprehensive school in the small town near Manchester. Back then, Rochdale seemed to him like a good place to be: “a multicultural community that had to face the economic consequences of deindustrialisation, but otherwise seemed surprisingly intact”.

Since then, many things have changed. During his residency, Werthschulte focussed his research on South and West Yorkshire, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to answer questions such as: Which kind of future did the people imagine for themselves in 2016? What ideas of being English have influenced the vote? How do they imagine their future now on the eve of Brexit? The 41 year old works as a journalist for print media and radio such as Cologne's Stadtrevue magazine and culture radio station WDR Cosmo and has an academic background in the field of British cultural studies.

The article that was published in the context of the (Re)-Collecting Europe Residency you can read here: