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PO-3319
Researching Politics 1
Researching Politics (RP) provides students with the skills that underlie the process of conducting and communicating cutting-edge research in Politics and International Relations.
RP works by creating topic groups, each comprised of 8-10 students. Each group will follow a bespoke course set out by their topic tutor, guiding them through the literature in a substantive research area. Students are invited to select a list of preferred options in the first teaching week of the term. This list is then used to assign students to topics and group sessions run from the second week of teaching onwards.
Alongside the topic-specific teaching, there is a general lecture series focusing on discovering, analysing and presenting complex information. The lecture series also focuses on dealing with the ups and downs of working as part of a team.
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PO-3320
Researching Politics 2
Researching Politics 2 (RP2) is the follow-on module from RP1 and it acts as the culmination for the subject knowledge and transferable skills developed in that module. RP2 puts the creative emphasis in the hands of the students, with the module convenor and topic tutors giving guidance and feedback to facilitate the realisation of research conceived, developed, executed and presented by students. In this way, it tries to approximate the worlds of further study and work into which students will be progressing following the completion of their degree schemes.
It is a module where all of the summative assessments are comprised of group work, although individual marks can be varied depending on each student¿s performance. Students are also required to submit an individual self-assessment, detailing what they have learned about their own strengths and weaknesses on the basis of the sustained group work.
In RP2, you will extend and deepen the research undertaken in RP1 and continue to meet regularly in order to share ideas, opinions and sources in your groups. These meetings will include several where the topic tutor provides guidance and feedback as well as those where the meetings are student-led.
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PO-3338
Global Environmental Politics
Environment is vital for humans. It is key for their livelihoods, cultural and religious practices, health and wellbeing in their everyday lives. It is also essential for national and global development agendas, as it provides space and materials to facilitate industrialisation, trade, agriculture and urbanisation. Environment has also become part of national and international security agendas with the visible impacts of climate change on mere existence of small island states and coastal regions as well as increasing global competition over raw materials and energy sources and shared (transboundary) sources.
Over past few decades, global environment, and climate has been changing at an unprecedented rate, thanks to rapid industrialisation and urbanisation and anthropogenic activities. Issues ranging from increasing number of climate extremes such as droughts, flood and heatwaves, extinction of species, ocean acidification, depletion of ozone layer, to extractive industries-led environmental degradation and conflicts over natural resources, have become a new ¿normal¿ in our daily lives at multiple levels. Addressing these issues also has become a significant part of political agendas, requiring efforts and commitment of several actors at multiple scales.
This module introduces students to complexities of global environmental challenges and politics. The first part of the module will enable students to learn roles of different actors in global environmental politics, from individuals to international and transnational actors as well as familiarising them with key conceptual and theoretical debates (such as development, justice/inequalities and security) shaping the discipline. In the second part of the module, students will learn politics of specific environmental challenges (such as climate change, water and extractive industries) at multiple scales.
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PO-3340
Global Environmental Politics
Environment is vital for humans. It is key for their livelihoods, cultural and religious practices, health and wellbeing in their everyday lives. It is also essential for national and global development agendas, as it provides space and materials to facilitate industrialisation, trade, agriculture and urbanisation. Environment has also become part of national and international security agendas with the visible impacts of climate change on mere existence of small island states and coastal regions as well as increasing global competition over raw materials and energy sources and shared (transboundary) sources.
Over past few decades, global environment, and climate has been changing at an unprecedented rate, thanks to rapid industrialisation and urbanisation and anthropogenic activities. Issues ranging from increasing number of climate extremes such as droughts, flood and heatwaves, extinction of species, ocean acidification, depletion of ozone layer, to extractive industries-led environmental degradation and conflicts over natural resources, have become a new ¿normal¿ in our daily lives at multiple levels. Addressing these issues also has become a significant part of political agendas, requiring efforts and commitment of several actors at multiple scales.
This module introduces students to complexities of global environmental challenges and politics. The first part of the module will enable students to learn roles of different actors in global environmental politics, from individuals to international and transnational actors as well as familiarising them with key conceptual and theoretical debates (such as development, justice/inequalities and security) shaping the discipline. In the second part of the module, students will learn politics of specific environmental challenges (such as climate change, water and extractive industries) at multiple scales.
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POLM07
Rights-based Approaches to Development
In a world divided, defined as much by its problems as its promises ¿ those who have, and those who don¿t ¿ human rights-inspired approaches to development offer a compelling opportunity to reshape the world for the better. But what role, if any, can RBADs play?
Development is changing ¿ since the dawn of the new millennium the incorporation of human rights into development discourse and policy and practice has changed how we think about, and `do¿, development. In this module you¿ll consider how rights-based approaches to development (RBAD) have emerged as part of a new orthodoxy with respect to international development policy. RBADs provide a distinctive language for analysing poverty as a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon and for analysing governance as a process that responds directly to people¿s claims, entitlements, and rights. They direct attention to aspects of poverty traditionally neglected in development policy at national and international levels and to contested phenomena such as `the capabilities approach¿ (Amartya Sen and others) and `structural violence¿ (Galtung 1968, Farmer 2005 and others). Nevertheless, RBADs remain uncertain. You will critically debate key tensions and challenges that persist in both their ethics and application. You will negotiate challenging case studies amidst the recent rise of populist, nativist and atavistic nationalism, threats to democracy, and the legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic, which represent significant threats to the protection and promotion of human rights and to the implementation of rights-based approaches to development throughout the world.
You will explore: 1/ the emergence of RBAD and their promise, 2/ the policy commitments of donors and governments and the obligations imposed on donors and governments by international human rights law, 3/ real-world case studies, in particular a focus on the impact of RBADs on the ongoing challenges presented in the right to water and sanitation.
You will query: How does the protection and promotion of human rights advance the cause of international development? How does a rights-based approach to development contrast with other approaches to development, such as needs-based or supply-driven development or orthodox development strategies such as structural adjustment and ideological frameworks such as neoliberalism? To what extent are rights-based approaches to development underpinned by international law, and operationalised in development policy and practice and what dilemmas arise? How successful have attempts to enhance and protect the rights of women and children been, or to assert the fundamental right to water and sanitation[DJ1.1]?
And you¿ll conclude: to what extent do RBADs offer a genuinely fairer, `developed¿ world for all?
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POLM15
Governing the Global Now: Contemporary Challenges in Policy and Politics
This module dives into some of the biggest issues facing governments and societies around the world today¿issues like climate change, health, economics, education, identity politics, crime, and global cooperation. You¿ll explore how different countries and institutions respond to these challenges, and what makes policy-making so complex in a fast-changing world.[DJ2.1]
The module draws from experts exploring contemporary issues of global policy relevance and incorporates cutting-edge research on a variety of policy challenges. The policy areas will be adapted to the issues most pressing in politics and policy at any given time, but each area will touch on key themes related to politics, public policy and governance, including:
1. Power and Participation ¿ Who gets a say in shaping policy? We¿ll look at political influence, public engagement, and how identity shapes decision-making.
2. Policy and Political Tools and Institutions ¿ How do policies actually get made? This theme explores the people, processes, and systems behind policy-making in areas like education, crime, and public health.
3. Global Connections and Disruptions ¿ What happens when problems cross borders? We¿ll examine global governance, environmental crises, migration, and other issues that require international cooperation.
You¿ll start and end the module with sessions that tie these themes together, helping you see the bigger picture of how governance works across different levels¿from local to global.
Expect a mix of theory, real-world case studies, and practical tasks¿great preparation for careers in policy, government, or advocacy.
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POLM17
Dissertation
Throughout your MA course, you¿ve been developing towards this point ¿ the dissertation. You are emerging scholars with fresh insights and depths of knowledge, and this is the time to put these to work and produce an original contribution to the field that you can be proud of.
Over the late spring and Summer, with the extensive support of a supervisor expert in your area (and building on your existing methodology modules), you¿ll scope out, design, and conduct an independent project of study on a topic of your choosing, pursuing the questions that motivate your interest in the subject. You might be poring over declassified intelligence agency archives looking for evidence of complicity in mass violence, charting the everyday politics of energy and logistics that (quite literally) keeps the lights on, or answering the big questions about where we¿re going in an increasingly precarious twenty-first century ¿ this is a chance for you to truly spread your wings and research what interests you.
Between this extended project, and the accompanying presentation of your findings, this represents the culmination of your studies, building on all the modules you¿ve studied and skills you¿ve gathered. This is a great opportunity to develop detailed knowledge of a particular field, hone competencies that will make you a skilled researcher and policy advocate in the real world, give you skills managing a major research project.
