Explore the profound transformations reshaping the contemporary international system. You will build on your knowledge of foundational theories and concepts to examine the dynamic interplay of power shifts, globalization and evolving security landscapes. You will critically analyse the changing distribution of power, including the rise of emerging powers and the implications for global order. At the same time, you will explore alternative visions for international cooperation.

By examining emerging concepts such as human, environmental and gendered security, you will go beyond traditional security studies to scrutinise the role of power and discourse in shaping security practices. You will engage with the complexities of peacebuilding in a transforming world and analyse the evolving nature of conflict, the challenges of sustainable peace, and the contributions of international organizations and civil society.

Gain the skills you need to complete independent research in Politics and nternational Relations. Direct your own learning by developing a research project on your chosen topic. Throughout the module, you will develop knowledge of both qualitative and quantitative research methods, and you’ll analyse a large quantitative political dataset using various methods to test for statistically significant relationships between variables.

You will learn about three major approaches to qualitative research that will prepare you for future independent research work:

• How to conduct interviews
• How to analyse the discourse of political actors
• How to conduct comparative case studies

You’ll find that the skills you develop during this module will be a useful asset when seeking employment as a Politics graduate.

Discover how wars are among the most important drivers of historical change. They have transformed states, societies, borders and landscapes, as well as ideas, identities, and worldviews.

The decision to go to war is rarely taken lightly, but the mechanisms and norms for doing so have varied greatly over time. How peoples mobilize themselves for conflict has likewise been shaped by ideas about rights, responsibilities, and roles, ideas sometimes rooted in shifting concepts of gender and racial ideologies.

War is also a crucible of scientific and technological change. From the longbow to the machine gun, and from photography and reconstructive surgery to the atomic bomb, war has stimulated scientific and technological innovation while unleashing its most destructive forces.

By exploring war and its legacies in all its complexities, you’ll see it not as a unique form of human endeavour, but as a realisation of broader social, cultural, and intellectual forces.

This thought-provoking module unpacks the global surge of authoritarianism and democratic backsliding. It examines different forms of autocracy and moves beyond traditional classifications to explore the diverse strategies of repression employed by 21st-century authoritarian regimes, from digital surveillance and manipulation to physical violence.

We’ll examine the forces that contribute to the resilience of these regimes, including economic resources, international support, and the erosion of democratic norms. Crucially, we will also consider the various forms of resistance that emerge in response to authoritarian rule, from grassroots movements and civil disobedience to transnational advocacy and digital activism.

Through comparative case studies and theoretical frameworks, you will develop a sophisticated understanding of the challenges and possibilities for democratic contestation in an era of resurgent authoritarianism. You will critically assess the effectiveness of different resistance strategies and explore the implications for international relations and human rights.

From financial meltdowns to rising inequalities, from environmental breakdown to the looming automation revolution, global capitalism appears to be in a state of permanent uncertainty. Studying the global economy has never been more urgent.

In this module we’ll ask:

• Are states at the mercy of global corporations?
• Can capitalism survive the climate crisis?
• Is Western economic dominance coming to an end?

You will explore the historical evolution, major transformations and possible futures of global capitalism, drawing on the insights of its defenders and its critics. Crucially, the module casts light on the unequal power relations structuring the global economy and the ways existing patterns of trade and production impact development opportunities in the Global South.

Through both theoretical engagement with competing political economy perspectives and the study of real-world developments, you will learn to analyse the social challenges posed by the evolution of global capitalism and assess the limits of contemporary economic governance.

How do people share ideas? Who controls information? What technologies make communication around the world possible? From medieval to modern history, knowledge and ideas have been written, printed, hidden, copied, gossiped about, archived, and destroyed.

You’ll examine cultures of information and misinformation around the world. Circuits of information have been cultivated in state and religious institutions, social networks, mass media, and, more recently, the internet. From espionage to scandals and fake news, you’ll ask who is shaping information, with what tools or media, and with what political, ethical, social, and economic motivations and consequences.

You’ll study how ideas are transmitted, for example in songs, slave networks, books, laws, maps, advertisements, newspapers, and letters. You’ll build critical skills in assessing provenance and context of information, past and present, preserved and lost, digital and analogue, true and false.

To what rights are humans entitled? How are those rights balanced with the rights of other organisms and the environment? How are they balanced with the needs of societies and governments? The protection of human rights has been used to justify international conflict and military intervention to save lives, yet human rights critics have argued that they are a form of cultural imperialism limiting the sovereignty of local populations.

You will explore the codification of rights, from Magna Carta and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the Geneva Conventions, and how questions of rights have manifested in movements for decolonisation and self-determination, debates on the use of capital punishment, and campaigns for gendered, disability and same-sex relationship rights. You’ll also explore how societies have considered rights in relation to landscapes, from the right to roam to the protection of spaces, from medieval forests to the creation of national parks.

How have war and violence changed with the birth of the modern age? How have modern geopolitics and war transformed the ethical, political and strategic conditions of international politics and economy?

In this module you will learn key concepts and critical approaches to the study of war and peace. In taking a longer view of war’s social, political, and cultural histories, you will develop a strong intellectual foundation as well as gaining an understanding of less traditional methods for analysing conflict in different global contexts.

Through an exploration of key events, technologies and practices that have shaped the modern world, we will interrogate war’s contested legacies around the globe while also challenging the field’s usual emphasis on war over alternative perspectives such as peace, non-violence, and political action.

This module will allow you to spend the year working in a graduate-level placement role in the industry or sector that interests you most. Throughout the year, you will build an awareness of what is required in the professional workplace whilst developing a range of transferable skills.

During the module you will reflect on and critically analyse: your own career readiness, the ongoing development of your self-awareness in terms of skills and professional knowledge, and your understanding of current workplace practices and professional etiquette.

Our Careers and Placements Team will support you during your placement with online contact and learning resources.

Investigate an area of Politics and International Relations that is of particular interest to you by carrying out a detailed research project. The topic may be inspired by a module you’ve taken, or it may be less directly linked to course work but of special appeal to you.

The dissertation is an extended piece of written work and a chance to develop your research skills and your ability to work independently. You will be assigned an academic supervisor who will have some familiarity with your chosen topic. They will support you through the different stages of the dissertation, from developing your research design, to confirming your research question and working out the best methodology.

Complete your undergraduate student journey by demonstrating that you can apply the critical thinking and research skills you have learned to sharp political analysis of your own.

In line with recent historiographical developments, this module shifts the focus away from the two superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union – and Europe, to provide a Global History of the Cold War. Engaging with leading international scholarship, you will explore key episodes of the conflict across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

This approach enables a thorough understanding of the regional and local dimensions of this global conflict and highlights the influence of 'Third World' actors and lesser Cold War powers such as the People's Republic of China.

You will hone your analytical and technical skills by working with a diverse array of primary sources from around the world. These sources, used in both classroom discussions and assignments, will help you conceptualise and critically analyse the Global Cold War while positioning yourself within the dynamic historiography of the field.

Uncover the origins of modern consumer society in Britain. In the century from the abolition of advertising tax in 1853 to the birth of commercial television in the 1950s, advertising became a pervasive feature of modern life, and Britain became a nation of consumers. Through a range of sources, including press reports, social surveys and – of course – advertisements, you’ll investigate the impact of new shopping environments like the department store and the supermarket, and the rise of ethical consumerism.

Advertising is political, and you’ll also examine how it helped Britain win two world wars and market the Empire to its citizens. By the end of the module, you will understand how advertising sells us much more than simply clothes or food, how it shapes the way we view gender and race and how it creates support for a market economy based on the principles of freedom and choice.

What happens when radically different forms of art meet? How do these fused forms change our understanding of the world? We will draw on material from different periods and continents, to explore works of art where, for example, film meets history, poetry meets philosophy, fine art meets sociology, religion meets fiction, and theatre meets politics.

Examine how cogent issues in crime, justice and punishment have been treated historically from the eighteenth century. Taking advantage of online historical datasets, including Digital Panopticon and Old Bailey Online, you will be introduced to the vast range of historic criminal justice records.

On the module, the classroom becomes the archive. You’ll get hands on with primary sources evidencing the social and cultural history of modern Britain, and act as Digital Detectives to gather evidence to unlock the world of Victorian crime and punishment.

By using digital approaches to this evidence, you will be able to navigate a history from below and explore the impact of crime and injustice on diverse social groups including women, the working classes, migrants and youth. You’ll explore historical experiences of crime, justice and punishment both at scale and at the level of the individual in its fullest evidential context.

How might we engage with the implications of environmental transformation locally, nationally and globally? Where do we have agency and capacity to intervene?

This module brings together a range of perspectives—historical, political, philosophical and cultural—to explore the nature and severity of the effects of the climate crisis on our world.

In this module you’ll encounter advanced critical approaches to the study of war and security. Focusing on the social, political, and cultural complexity of war in the ‘late modern’ period, the module builds on theoretical knowledge gained previously in the course, to investigate and contest war’s increasing reach both around the globe and into everyday life.

Marking the transition from the Cold War to the ‘Global War on Terror,’ this module considers especially how contemporary war has changed in terms of tactics, technologies, and terrain, investigating the various spaces in and through which wars are fought.

Finally, the module considers the emergence of the so-called ‘New Cold War’ through in-depth analysis of the social and political complexity of active and contemporary war in the 21st century.

Soviet history is often told through the prism of totalitarian oppression, but beneath layers of state control a vibrant dissident movement was active. In this module, you will explore the breadth, depth and complexity of the Soviet dissident movement and critically analyse the impact that they had on the wider world.

You will explore the nature of political life in the Soviet Union, ranging from the labour camps under Joseph Stalin, to the use and abuse of psychiatry under Nikita Khrushchev and the silencing of dissidents under Leonid Brezhnev. You’ll also consider the role dissidents played in the collapse of the Soviet regime and the position of dissidents in contemporary Russia.

By focusing on political dissidents in the Soviet system, you will critically assess how totalitarian governments function, how opposition movements operate and how the international community responds to this persecution.

The emergence, consolidation and transformation of world capitalism has been marked by its uneven character in terms of development, and the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources. This module aims to provide you with a theoretical foundation for the study of international development and the environment, by focusing on the structural roots of current challenges. We will focus in particular on global inequalities and environmental injustice.

Drawing on mainstream and critical development studies, international political economy and discourse analysis, the module examines the interconnections between uneven development and the deterioration of the natural environment. You will examine dominant ideas of economic growth, progress and sustainability.

Key concepts and theories will be discussed alongside specific examples from the Global South. Typically, topics will include the global debt crisis, green discourses, climate inequalities, and the commodification of nature under neoliberalism.

Examine two of the world’s most important powers - the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) – and a transatlantic alliance that was forged post-war and remains one of the most important globally despite current challenges.

The module provides an introduction to the EU’s normative power and its attempts to upload its distinctive European values internationally before looking at the US as the pre-eminent global superpower. In particular, the dynamics of EU-US relations will be explored and scrutinised. How has the Trump presidency affected the relationship between Brussels and Washington? What are the long-term prospects for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), still of vital importance to Central and Eastern Europe states? As Europe increasingly turns to security issues, how realistic is President Macron’s proposal for a European army to replace long-established American hard power?

Explore the history of South Asia from the abolition of sati to the death of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. You will consider the social, cultural and political histories through which the idea of India was expressed and contested.

You will examine the debates and rebellions through which the European colonial project was resisted and South Asian identities were expressed and cohered. You’ll begin by considering how, in the nineteenth century, the translations, interpretations and classifications of subcontinental history, society and language were created.

How were ideas of identity, community and freedom formed in response to and against the incursion of European power in the region? Subsequently, how did the idea of the nation coalesce into something beyond Empire to create not one, but two nations: India and Pakistan?

The thirteenth century brought rebellion against a tyrant, then a revolution: a party seized power from the king to govern England. This period is hailed as the foundation of democracy – but the reality is darker. Religious leaders were empowered to punish kings, rebels fought as crusaders, and people killed and died for a political cause.

You’ll explore events including the making of Magna Carta, the 1258 coup, and the Battle of Evesham that ended England's First Revolution. You’ll meet queens like Eleanor of Provence, leading knight William Marshal, and Pope Innocent III; tyrannical and hapless kings; Simon de Montfort, the revolution's leader; and the low-born people who flocked to his banner.

You’ll investigate their stories through letters, testimonies, and eye-witness accounts, and challenge historical interpretations of this era. What moves women and men, poor and rich, to risk their livelihoods, take life and give their own to decide who rules?

What does it mean to imagine a world without borders? Using materials typically derived from case studies, reports, archives, film, television and literature, this module foregrounds interdisciplinary approaches.

You will be encouraged to develop your understanding of migration and displacement, and to envision alternative global migration futures in ways that can impact future policy, political and societal perspectives.

With the blurring of the Home and Battle Fronts in Britain in the Second World War, the conventional wartime gender contract — in which men fight to protect the vulnerable at home and women keep the home fires burning — was challenged. In this module you will examine how war was experienced by those who conformed to and those who challenged gender norms, by those included in the war effort and those who stood outside it.

You’ll consider different categorisations of experience (military/civilian; home front/ battle front; male/female) and how historians have grappled with key concepts including the People’s War and hierarchies of service. Through a wide range of primary sources, including autobiographical materials, poems, photographs, films, parliamentary minutes, newspapers, posters and cartoons, you will seek to understand individual and collective experiences of the war and their gendered dimensions.

Today the claim that God designed everything in the universe has given way to the theory of evolution. The usual story of this change is one of conflict between science and religion. But we will challenge the popular narrative.

You will reconsider the rise and fall of the idea that nature was the work of a divine designer, focusing on the period 1450-1800. As well as trying to understand why the design argument became so important in the early modern period, you will seek to understand why it fell out of favour during the 18th century - long before the theory of evolution. But you will not simply be studying the history of ideas. To understand how early modern science changed, you will study a wide range of practices - from intellectual disciplines like philosophy, rhetoric and theology, to material practices including chemistry, architectural design, archaeology, and art.

Colonisation fundamentally transformed Jamaica’s paradisical environment. In this module, you will gain a detailed understanding of how this process occurred. You’ll begin by studying how the first colonists comprehended the New World environment and the importance of that environment for shaping settlement. You will then study how settlers exploited the Jamaican environment using enslaved African labour.

In the concluding section, you will examine how colonists sought to mitigate the devastating effects of plantation agriculture through nascent environmentalism. You’ll study this fascinating history using a diverse array of primary sources and by reading deeply in environmental history. In the assessment, you will be able to undertake your own research in environmental history. You will emerge from this module with a detailed understanding of Jamaica’s natural history and the field of environmental history more broadly.

What are the possibilities and pitfalls of community and citizen action, voice and agency? This module uses interdisciplinary case-studies to critically examine collaboration with communities.

You will participate in activities such as a mock citizens' assembly, visit local community groups and hear different points of view from a range of guest speakers on concepts like power, race, gender, class, affect and justice.

The module includes a placement where you will work on real-world policy-making scenarios. You’ll gain practical experience and in-depth knowledge of the policymaking process within different political contexts. You’ll also deepen your understanding of key theoretical frameworks and concepts in policy analysis and development.

As well as gaining professional skills, you’ll discover how academic knowledge acquired during your degree translates into different policy-making contexts. By the end of the module, you will be able to conduct robust policy research using various methodologies and tools, evaluate the ethical implications of policy decisions, and advocate for ethics and value-based approaches to policymaking.

In this module you will engage with some of the most challenging issues in international relations. Latin America and Africa are two of the most dynamic yet overlooked regions in contemporary international society.

You will explore various of facets of Latin American and African political processes and examine their shared colonial history, which continues to shape their political economies, post-colonial politics and policy-making, and rich cultural life. This is seen in their role as primary commodity exporters in the global economy, extensive ongoing external intervention, corruption, inequality, poverty, conflict, social movements, electoral populism, deep religiosity and creative renewal.

You will be encouraged to take what you have learnt and undertake independent research on issues affecting these regions and beyond.

In this module we critically examine the politics and history of the Middle East and Asia Pacific, focusing on how these regional categories have been historically constructed and contested. Themes will include:

• Colonial legacies
• Nationalism
• Authoritarianism
• Gender and politics
• Religion and ethnicity
• Political movements
• Changing forms of governance

Through comparative case studies, you will be introduced to the diversity of political systems and experiences across the two regions, and you will investigate patterns of similarity and difference.

The module responds to contemporary global developments and supports critical reflection on state, society and regional identity.

What do we understand by queerness? Looking back at earlier interpretations, we imagine how queerness might evolve—how it might be lived, felt and understood in the future.

You will explore queer futures from a range of perspectives and viewpoints, while examining both feminist and queer theory, as well as queer media and cultural texts and material relating to areas such as activism, politics and healthcare.

Unpack the socio-political contexts of two dynamic actors in world politics - the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation.

In the first part of the module, we will critically evaluate the application of familiar concepts such as modernity, legitimacy, nationalism and capitalism in understanding China under Xi Jinping.

In the second part, we will examine the emergence of President Putin’s Russia, before assessing implications of the consolidation of his power for Russian domestic and foreign policies. The aim of this section is to assess reasons for the deterioration of Russia’s relations with the West.

The module concludes with a comparison of the political directions of China and Russia, and the implications for their role in a gradually changing world (dis) order.

This module focuses on the interrelationship between security, strategy and technology. We begin with an introduction to Strategic Studies as an academic discipline, outlining key concepts and their relevance in the 21st century security environment.

We then apply these concepts to a variety of domains of conflict, examining emerging disruptive technologies, including artificial intelligence and quantum computing, and how militaries are integrating them into war fighting and defence innovation processes.

The module then moves on to explore the past, present and future of cyber conflict, and how state and non-state actors are leveraging cyber capabilities for strategic advantage inside and outside of war.

We will conclude by examining the parameters and drivers of conflict in the maritime domain, and how sea power and Maritime Security are changing in response to shifting geopolitical and technological trends. During the module you’ll develop the critical thinking skills that are necessary for future leaders in security and defence.

Who does technology benefit or harm, and what should its role in society be? This module examines the social and ethical issues surrounding the development of modern technologies and their use in the modern world, with a vision to shape our future relationship with technology.

We are living in an era of accelerating crises – of democracy, capitalism, environment, and governance itself – that are reshaping the 21st century global order. In this module you will examine these intersecting crises and their uneven social, political and economic impacts.

Moving beyond traditional political analyses, the module offers an original perspective on the complex interplay of technological disruptions, economic instability, health emergencies and geopolitical shifts. Informed by critical public policy, political economy and sustainability debates, the module explores how different actors, from international institutions to grassroots movements, attempt to contain these crises and how they are transformed by them.

Our understanding of power, security and governance is being reshaped by a world where crisis has become the norm. You will assess competing understandings and responses to ongoing challenges through in-depth case studies of specific crises, critical debates around their nature, and forward-looking research about their possible trajectories.

How do ideas understand, transform and conserve the world? In this module we will study examples of powerful ideas such as the nation, free speech, liberation, the free market, culture and nature. We will use case studies to help us explore the relationship between analysis, imagination and practice.