Megan Davidson: Introducing Myself

Megan Davidson joins Common Weal as our new member of staff. She introduces herself and explains how the path to political activism was not a straight line for her. 

My first newsletter is daunting, especially when I was told it had to be about me. How do you make your own story interesting enough for others to care? Maybe by being honest about the detours that brought me here.

I never set out to be a solicitor, and I never set out to be a policy communicator either. But every choice I made - and every frustration I carried - kept circling me back to the same questions: who holds power, and who pays the price? Those questions are what brought me here, to Common Weal.

When I was in school, I wanted to be a surgeon. But a failed maths exam at National 5 (one of those infamous years the SQA decided to be unnervingly cruel) knocked me off course. The sciences closed off, I was pushed towards something “respectable”.

My teachers and family were clear: politics or English literature would be a “waste” of a high achiever like me. So, I “settled” on law- Scots law. I quickly realised, and I would bet so do at least half of all first-year law students, that law wasn’t really what I had expected. Contract law and constitutional provisions are hardly thrilling to an eighteen-year-old hungry for big ideas.

Still, I stuck with it. By my final years, I was able to shape my studies more, focusing on human rights and humanitarian law. That was when the spark caught. For the first time, I could give an answer when people asked, “What kind of law do you want to go into?” What a relief.

But by graduation, I also knew I didn’t want to become a solicitor. Law felt too narrow, too constraining, too tied to a career path I hadn’t chosen but had fallen into by following advice I’d taken at fourteen. What I really wanted to ask the questions law could never fully answer - about power, about justice, and whose voices are heard and whose are silenced.

That’s what led me to a master’s in international political theory. It was more niche than I’d expected, but it finally scratched every intellectual itch I’d carried for years. I found myself drawn to postcolonial theory, migration theory, nationalism, and ethnic conflict. I grappled with ancient philosophers and modern theorists, tracing how ideas shape politics and vice versa.

My thesis explored the European Union’s Trust Fund for Africa and the neocolonial logics underpinning it. I examined how migration policy, aimed at development and humanitarian aid, reproduces old patterns of empire- sovereignty on paper but dependency in practice. Humanitarian aid often serves the giver more than the receiver.

What struck me most was that migration policy wasn’t really about people at all, but about power: who gets to move, who gets to decide, and who benefits. That work opened my eyes to the power imbalances still structuring our world. But what struck me most was how these ‘international’ issues weren’t distant at all. Migration, sovereignty, inequality- they are playing out here in Scotland, too, in how we debate immigration, in how we imagine independence, in how we design our economy and our democracy.

“I want to use this platform to speak with the urgency of my generation”

I am twenty-four years old. That makes me part of Gen Z, a generation spoken about far more often than it is listened to. We’re branded everything from socialist radicals to screen-addled nihilists, depending on who’s doing the labelling.

Our voices are instantly dismissed, our opinions ridiculed because of the stereotype that our phones matter to us more than politics. Like many of my peers, I resist those boxes. At the heart of it, what anchors me are fairness, equal dignity, and justice - values that shape every choice I make. Values that I believe politics should never compromise.

I worry deeply about my generation’s political landscape. Social media has become a petri dish for misinformation, outrage, and oversimplification. Some young people are pulled into harmful echo chambers that amplify cruelty and bigotry. But I also see others striving to build informed, respectful, principled debates- using platforms to connect, share and organise. That tension is part of the terrain my generation will have to navigate. What I want is to use my voice - here, in this role - to push back against cynicism and fatalism. To show that critique and hope can live side by side. That’s what drew me to Common Weal.

Too often, political debate is reduced to criticism without solutions, rhetoric without substance. I didn’t want to just point out what’s wrong - I want to help imagine what could be right. Common Weal is not just a think tank repackaging the same old ideas. It is, to me, an ideology in its own right: blunt when honesty is required, optimistic when change feels impossible, and always striving to say what has not yet been said. Without organisations like this, there are too few who hold Scottish politics to a higher standard. That is exactly why I wanted to be here.

I am proud to be Scottish. I believe in this country with a progressive instinct and a creative spirit. But I also see the gaps, the injustices, the ways we fail to live up to that promise- especially for younger generations and those in working-class communities. Common Weal offers a platform to bridge critique with vision, anger with action.

So, what will my focus be? Truthfully, I don’t know yet. And that’s the point. As a former law student, I am determined to keep asking how to build a fairer justice system, defend the logic of rights, and expand access to justice for all. I am equally interested in how global forces - migration, inequality, and power imbalances - shape the debates and policies here in Scotland, from our approach to immigration and social justice to how we imagine independence and democracy. Communications is more than exploring policy; it’s about telling stories that connect, provoke thought, and spark new conversations. That’s what I’d like to do with this role.

I don’t know yet which specific policy area will become ‘mine.’ But I do know this: I want to use this platform to speak with the urgency of my generation. To be blunt when honesty is needed. To be hopeful when hope feels scarce. And to be guided always by my belief that equity, equality, and justice are not just ideals, but achievable realities - if we choose them.