BA International Relations and Global Development

This module introduces students to key development theories and approaches. How have processes of transformation and change, ideas about progress, and the policy and practice of development unfolded around the world, over time? We consider major shifts in approaches to 'development', from colonial intervention, modernisation, dependency theory and developmentalism, to neoliberalism. Feminist contributions, participatory and decolonial approaches and post-development perspectives are also explored. 

What are the key contemporary issues in development? This module tackles questions of poverty and inequality; climate change and the environment; violence, conflict and humanitarianism; rural livelihoods and cities; labour and social justice; migration and displacement; and aid interventions. The factors shaping poverty, insecurity and inequality and debates about pathways to progress are considered throughout. 

This course examines the political economy of development processes and the specific development policies and strategies undertaken in different regions and countries of the world. The syllabus is designed to provide insights on the historical evolution of development debates, and an overview of the elements of theory and policy that are especially relevant to the study and practice of development.

This course examines the political economy of development processes and the specific development policies and strategies undertaken in different regions and countries of the world. The syllabus is designed to provide insights on the historical evolution of development debates, and an overview of the elements of theory and policy that are especially relevant to the study and practice of development.
The main focus of the course is to introduce basic and foundational concepts in development and the main actors involved at the national and global levels The course introduces to students key development debates on the environment, trade, resource mobilisation (aid, taxation, and finance) as well as how these issues are relevant for the understanding the political economy of three regions/countries (Africa, Middle East, and China).

This module is a core module in the BA International Relations and provides a general introduction to the discipline of International Relations and to major themes in world politics. Major theories and approaches to world politics are covered, including Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism, Marxism, Feminism, and Postcolonial Approaches. Topics to be covered will include issues of war and peace, power, global political economy, public health, environmental politics, justice and human rights, empire, and the crisis of liberal international order. The course pays particular attention to the relationship between the discipline of International Relations as a field of knowledge and its application and/or relevance to the experience and interests of actors in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

This module is a core module in the BA International Relations and provides a general introduction to the discipline of International Relations and to major themes in world politics. Major theories and approaches to world politics are covered, including Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism, Marxism, Poststructuralist, Feminism, and Postcolonial Approaches. Topics to be covered will include issues of war and peace, power, global political economy, identities and ideologies, environmental politics, technological change, justice and human rights, empire, and the crisis of liberal international order. The course pays particular attention to the relationship between the discipline of International Relations as a field of knowledge and its application and/or relevance to the experience and interests of actors in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Introduction to Global History provides students with a broad understanding of the development of the modern world system. Beginning with 1492, it traces how the world became increasingly integrated and connected – economically, politically, militarily and socially. The module begins by asking what we might mean by ‘global history,’ and then considers global phenomena including empire, slavery, colonialism and revolution, through primary and secondary sources. In short, the course seeks to “narrate the world’s past in an age of globality” (Geyer and Bright), and to show how and where that past interacts with the present.

Introduction to Global History 2 provides students with a broad understanding of the development of the contemporary world system, tracing moments of global crisis and instability, as well as activist responses to them, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and seeing how each reverberates in global politics today. The module covers topics as broad as women's emancipation, fascism, decolonisation, and the energy crisis through primary and secondary sources. This is one of two Introduction to Global History modules, organised broadly chronologically. The first one runs roughly to the 1920s. This second module looks at the last century of global history.

This is the first of two modules, both called 'Introduction to Political Economy’. Between them, the modules offer an introduction to the multidisciplinary field of political economy. The examination of political economy is important for how it sheds light on the complexity of international capitalism, including its structures, processes, and outcomes. To accomplish this objective, insights from across the social sciences are needed. In other words, to paraphrase a famous quote, the world economy is too important to be left to the economists. Introduction to Political Economy 1 is organised around debates in two areas: (1) a set of scene setting ‘big questions’ to introduce the material; and (2) conceptual frameworks, derived from the scholarly tradition of political economy and world politics, including liberalism, Marxism, gender-based approaches, racial political economy, and economic nationalism. Students are asked to think critically about how the politics of the economy is conceived, governed, and experienced, in particular through evaluating dynamics of power. There are two main questions addressed throughout the module: (1) why and how does political economy take its current forms?; and (2) how do practices of political economy create uneven consequences between particular social agents, including countries, classes, and other groups and identities?

This is the second of two modules, both called 'Introduction to Political Economy'. Between them, the two modules offer an introduction to the multidisciplinary field of political economy. The examination of political economy is important for how it sheds light on the complexity of international capitalism, including its structures, processes, and outcomes. To accomplish this objective, insights from across the social sciences are needed. In other words, to paraphrase a famous quote, the world economy is too important to be left to the economists. Introduction to Political Economy 2 is organised around a set of debates transfixing the world economy, including the political economy of global finance, new trade politics, socio-economic inequalities, new concerns on technology, the political economy of work, consumerism, ecological crises, and macro debates on capitalism and its possible futures. The module features a unique assessment in which students are asked to conduct field work in the City of London to answer a particular question. Students are asked to think critically about how the politics of the economy is conceived, governed, and experienced, in particular through evaluating dynamics of power. There are two main questions addressed throughout the modules: (1) why and how does political economy take its current forms?; and (2) how do practices of political economy create uneven consequences between particular social agents, including countries, classes, and other groups and identities? 

This module explores how development is shaped from 'above' and 'below' by a range of actors. It explores the institutional history and (changing) ways of working of these actors, considering the goals, methods and power dynamics shaping their interventions. To this end, the module foregrounds the actors most associated with 'from above' (i.e. World Bank) and 'from below' (i.e. social movements) development, and dissects the philosophies and approaches that characterise them, in so doing, the module provides a deeper understanding of how development works (or is supposed to), what alternative understandings of development look like, and how different actors work to make more (or less) space for such alternatives.

This module explores concrete examples from across the global South of efforts to bring about development, from above, below or a combination of both. The module will examine the ways in which varied actors have identified problems and opportunities, and formulated and implemented interventions. In what ways do they take into consideration power relations within communities, and differentiation around class, gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, and other identities? What impact have they had? It also looks at the unruly politics of development from below led by local and transnational groups and communities who organise to influence, reform or resist intervention. A range of cases, tracking the interventions of the actors outlined in the prerequisite module, 'Development actors from above and below', will be used across the module. Examples include low-carbon development in Ethiopia, resistance to forced eviction in informal settlements in Indonesia, different ways of influencing dam construction in India, the labour strategies of Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa, women's movements in Korea and former resistance to neoliberal agricultural reform in India.

This module analyses conceptual issues relating to labour and development, including historical aspects of labour and capitalist development in the Global North and South. We engage with debates around the working poor under neoliberalism, including the differences between poverty-focused and labour-focused social policy. We will look in detail at the processes and institutions that blight the lives of the working poor such as modern slavery/unfree labour as well as the emergence of apparent opportunities such as the gig/sharing economy. Perhaps most importantly, we examine resistance via case studies of struggles of and for the working poor by organised labour and social movements, their potential and limitations.

This module gives an introduction to the contemporary and future consequences of the intertwined histories of global development and environmental change. The module is organised into three parts. Part 1, on environmental histories and futures, locates the roots of contemporary social-environmental relations in the historical emergence of capitalism. Part 2 surveys key global environmental problems arising from social-environmental relations of capital in the 21st-century. Part 3 reflects on different ways of responding to the current moment that social-environmental relations of capital have led us to, and the varying futures that might result from its continuation or contestation, depending on whether we choose reform, rejection, revolution or resignation.

The purpose of this course is to examine the effects of political factors on economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. It aims to familiarise students with various theories of economic development, specifically the role of the state and government intervention, and then to guide students in tracing these theories against the empirical evidence from a range of examples from states in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. It will thereby enable students to acquire a nuanced and empirically grounded perspective on the reasons for wide variations in economic development.

This module is designed to introduce students to the major theoretical approaches and concepts in contemporary Development Economics. Both mainstream and heterodox approaches to Development Economics will be covered. Students will have the opportunity to critically engage with international development policy debates by unpicking the theories, frameworks and methods underpinning these debates. The module will apply theories to contemporary issues in low income countries, relying on a variety of case studies throughout.

This module provides an introduction to both classical and recent approaches in economic anthropology. Moving away from narrow understandings of economy, it will explore how economic life is embedded in social relations, cultural transformations and political action. This includes vital topics such as money and commodities, the gendering/racialising of labour, cultures of consumption, informal economies, indebtedness and finance. Finally, it will investigate how anthropologists are envisaging the future of economic life and alternatives to neoliberal austerity, and how an engaged anthropology can contribute to shaping alternatives.

The course will enable students to interrogate the relationship between violent conflict and development and will provide a comprehensive grounding in theory, policy and practice surrounding war and violence. Throughout the course there is emphasis on understanding war and peace as a continuum, rather than seeing them as distinct and separate phenomena, and conceptualising a ‘spectrum of violence’ that explores both the ‘spectacular’ violence of war and other forms of structural, ‘slow’ and everyday violence that shape the relationship between conflict and development. The course is structured so as to allow students to engage with (1) the causes of violent conflict (weeks 1-3); (2) the structures and manifestations of war (weeks 4-6); (3) Interventions and the aftermath of war (weeks 7 – 10).

The module embraces a range of voices that have contributed to debates around development over the years, the insights they have brought to different issues, and the divergences and convergences between thinkers. We explore influential conceptualisations of the relationship between state, market and society including critical analyses of modernity and the development of capitalism; the influence and legacies of colonialism and empire; race, class and gender; and the very idea of development as it is linked to notions of progress in the contemporary world.

This course looks at the writings and influence of key thinkers and theories in development. We will take an in-depth look at critical voices in development debates, and explore how they have shaped understandings and debates on development, on the role of institutions and power in shaping development processes, and on development policy and practice. Students are expected to explore these theories and ideas and how they have been subsequently interpreted, used and critiqued. Keep in mind the contribution each thinker has made to development studies and practice.

What is the future of NATO and the Bretton Woods System? Is the United Nations a universal organisation? Do international courts successfully uphold international law? These are just a few of the questions addressed in this module, which broadly surveys the major concepts, theories, and debates within the field of International Relations (IR) and cognate disciplines to study the role of international institutions in world politics. The module highlights the multidimensional complexities of the evolving international system and encourages students to critically reflect upon the capacities and limitations of nation-states, transnational professionals and non-state actors to cooperate and solve international and transnational political problems. The module is divided across five themes that cover history and theory, global order, actors, regionalism, and current debates on the role of international institutions in world politics. By the completion of this module, students will possess a deeper understanding of the changes and continuities in the contemporary international system and the political and security dynamics that shape it.

When you graduate, you need to find a job, a home, and a lifestyle. Unless you possess extraordinary independent wealth (congrats), none of these objectives are possible without dipping your toes into the icy waters of the capitalist system. This module can obviously not guarantee your future dreams, but it can equip you with the knowledge to better navigate a planet where politics and economics fuse and confuse. Without fear or hindrance, Politics of the World Economy encourages you to see and paint the kaleidoscopic colours of political economy. Our journey moves through two stages. In the opening five weeks, we introduce the subject of political economy by exploring major conceptual frameworks used to study capitalism, along with tracing significant recent histories of the world economy. In the second stage, these insights are mobilised for dissecting hot current issues, including the AI revolution, the politics of the green transition, emerging frontiers of finance, and the political economy of land and property. Across all these topics, you are asked to think critically about how the politics of the international economy is conceived, governed, and experienced. This module is suitable for students who have, or have not, taken Introduction to Political Economy 1 and Introduction to Political Economy 2. Please note: approximately one-third of the content of Politics of the World Economy is similar to Introduction to Political Economy 1.  

This module provides UG students with an advanced introduction to key issues in postcolonial theory. The module covers fundamental concepts in postcolonial theory, such as orientalism, the subaltern, self-determination, agency, and resistance. It also looks at the intersection of postcolonial theory with Marxism, feminism, and queer theory. More recent approaches to settler colonialism and the decolonization of knowledge are also addressed in this module. On successful completion of this module a student will be able to engage with key debates in postcolonial theory and assess the usefulness of postcolonial theory for understanding contemporary global politics.

International Relations as a discipline has historically given little importance to religion as an explanatory category in modern international politics. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and with the advent of the 'war on terror' there were increasing efforts to address this gap - however this reintroduction of religion by way of counterterrorism leads only to a very limited engagement with religion (one disproportionately focused on Islamic terrorism). Where other types of religious political movements and actors are analysed, religion is often either reduced to simply an identity category or seen as a displacement for other, more Worldly, concerns - it is rarely taken seriously on its own terms. This course seeks to provide a more holistic approach to the role of religion in contemporary world politics. The course will engage with a number of religious traditions from across the World in order to interrogate questions of secularism, violence, religious nationalism, civil society, soft power initiatives, and conflict resolution. What role does religion play in addressing the major crises of the present day? The course will also address methodological questions raised by the engagement with diverse religious traditions, as well as the uses of religion as an analytical category more broadly. We will ask whether the significance of religion can be easily fit into existing IR models or whether taking religion seriously requires a more radical departure.

This module introduces students to the phenomenon of war and demonstrates its ubiquity across time and space in human affairs, and develops an account of war as a constitutive force in the production of world politics past, present and future.

International Relations of South Asia will give students a broad and comprehensive introduction to this subject. Beginning with conventional IR theory disciplinary frames, it will explore inter-state relations in the South Asian region including the history of conflict between India and Pakistan, the nature of Indian dominance/hegemony over the South Asian region, the place of Afghanistan in conceptualisations of ‘South Asia’, as well as the security perspectives of smaller states in the region including Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Other topics in the course will examine non-conventional security issues including questions of economic and environmental security posed by the sharing of international rivers and climate change, as well as the human security issues provoked by ethnic and other forms of conflict in the region.

This course is designed to provide students with a theoretically informed and comparative introduction to key issues in the contemporary international relations of East Asia. East Asia is defined as the states of the Northeast Asia (in particular, China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan), and the two main external actors, the United States and Soviet Union/Russia who played a key role influencing the region’s international relations. East Asia presents fascinating case studies in the study of international relations by bringing together the world’s three largest economies (US, China, Japan), three of the UN Security Council’s permanent members (US, Russia, China) and two divided nations (China/Taiwan and the two Korea).

This module examines the historical processes by which African economic and political systems emerged and became intertwined with external actors through colonialism, the slave trade and struggles for decolonisation and the ways in which independent African states formed and sought to cooperate with each other to overcome the legacies of slavery and the remnants of colonialism. It covers their approaches to: a) security, considering post-colonial African conflicts, and the means by which African states and political movements sought to negotiate the global Cold War; and b) International political economy, considering how African states sought to overcome marginality and dependence and to pursue their own development priorities as well as to make more just international economic structures.

This module considers controversies in Africa's contemporary international relations, considering the changing nature of peacekeeping and intervention since the end of the Cold War, discussing attempts made by non-African agencies, under the rubric of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and 'development', to effect fundamental changes within African security systems, state economic policies, governance systems and social organization, as well as 'African solutions to African problems': Continental, regional and unliateral African states' actions to try and re-take ownership of their own security and development. The module also discusses recent developments, including the revitalisation of Pan-Africanist and resource-nationalist projects, the effects of the ‘Global War on Terror’, the growing influence on the continent of China and other non-Western powers, all of which raise debates about whether African positions and roles in the international system are changing in any fundamental sense.

This interdisciplinary course provides an in-depth introduction to the international politics of western Asia and, to a lesser extent, North Africa. The course thus investigates both the factors involved in the making of international politics in the area, and the way we can comprehend them. To that end, it introduces students to the discourse of “Orientalism”, theories of international relations such as (neo)realism and social constructivism and other approaches that are relevant to an in-depth enquiry into the complex interactions within the region. Beyond this conceptual focus, themes such as Islam, gender, democracy, civil society, globalisation, fundamentalism, terrorism, revolution etc. are also covered in close juxtaposition to the post-colonial development of the regional state system.

This interdisciplinary course provides an in-depth introduction to the international relations of the Middle East with a particular emphasis on the foreign policies of major states. It links the study of international relations as a subject matter with the inter-state conflict (e.g. the Persian Gulf Wars, the conflict in Israel/Palestine etc.), foreign policy of major regional states (Iran, Turkey, Iraq etc.) and “global” politics. The course thus investigates both the factors involved in the making of international politics in the area, and the way we can comprehend them.

This module introduces students to politics in Southeast Asia in order to familiarize them with the broad contours of political change in the region, academic debates explaining these changes and ways of thinking about current and future political trends. The course covers mainland South East Asia, including Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

This module introduces students to politics in Southeast Asia in order to familiarize them with the broad contours of political change in the region, academic debates explaining these changes and ways of thinking about current and future political trends. The course covers maritime and island South East Asia, including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Timor Leste, and the Philippines.

This innovative module builds on the theoretical knowledge and foundations gained through the first two years of studying Global Development, to now think about how to translate that understanding into practical action for change. In Making Change Happen 1, students explore a variety of approaches and tools for thinking about what change looks like, how it takes place, and how to identify points of entry for change-makers. It also explores a range of skills and tools for understanding the change-context and working with local communities as allies and partners.

This innovative module builds on Making Change Happen 1, and shifts the focus to thinking about different kinds of change-making activity and interventions. After considering issues around power and policy, students will explore what change-making looks like in a number of different settings (including the development project, protest and campaigning). Students will also explore approaches for measuring the impact of change-making interventions.

This 3rd year module provides students with the opportunity to identify, develop and produce a research based dissertation related to any area of their interest within development studies. Students will benefit from peer support and guidance from the module convenor in regular training sessions throughout the two terms of study. In term 2, they will each present their ongoing research to the student group for feedback and discussion. Individually, they will also work with an academic supervisor who will provide specific support in the framing of the project, its theoretical underpinnings and its methodologies.

The module will familiarise students with the role gender plays in global development and with the history of gender and development. It will train students to centre gender in the analysis of development processes and interventions. Sessions in the module address issues of coloniality, sexuality, race, economic dependence and debt, violence, peace and security, food-systems and the ecology. They explore their relation to intersectional inequality as well to gender and intersectional justice. 

Almost all questions of our time revolve around the conceptualisation, functions and effects of boundaries and of bordering processes. Whether we talk about sovereignty, geopolitics, and humanitarian interventions; citizenship, identity and migration; economic integration, financial crises and protectionism; globalism, localism, or transnationalism; and more broadly, distinctions, discriminations, exclusions and inclusions; borders are central for our understanding of processes of social change. Development is no exception and the module, at its broadest, draws from the vast body of literature concerned with these issues to study the relation between borders and the development process.

Forced migration is an issue that is constantly in the news and political debates. This module unpacks crucial questions. We consider how forced migration is understood from different angles and how diverse forms of violence and climate change drive displacement. We also examine the frameworks that displaced people encounter – from humanitarian assistance, regimes of protection, pursuit of ‘durable solutions’ and ‘developmental approaches’ – to measures seeking to contain and control people’s movements. We explore the role of diasporas, activists and global governance initiatives, discussing ways forward. Throughout, we keep in focus the lived realities of displacement and how power relations shape institutional responses.

What is migration? Is this the “age of migration”? What is Diaspora and what challenges do diasporic communities bring to modern political constructions such as the nation-state, national “imagined” communities, citizenship and their associated metaphysics of sedentarism? This module explores these issues by critically engaging with the ways in which migration and diaspora have been understood historically and in modern and contemporary times.

Students will engage with the central theoretical and ethical debates relating to anthropologies of climate change, and consider how these have developed in relation to key social movements and moments from the twentieth century to the present. Topics including temporality, political economy, development, justice, ethics, distress, activism and more-than-human ecologies of care are explored, with students encouraged to consider how they might approach crafting their own anthropologies of climate change. Whilst attention is given to historical antecedents and the development of climate as an object of concern, both within and outside the academy, the course looks at contemporary developments and encourages students to think about how they might engage with and shape emergent anthropologies of the anthropocene. In this, the intersection between anthropology and activism is explored, as we ask not only how we can write anthropologies of a warming planet, but also how anthropologies of the anthropocene can help us collectively navigate uncertain planetary futures.

This module is a Year 3 optional module for Economics Undergraduates. It aims at providing students with a thorough understanding of core economic policy challenges in the contemporary global economy, and to equip them with the theoretical and applied skills necessary to evaluate policy debates and challenges and contemplate policy solutions to such challenges.

This course looks at the interaction between China's economic transformation and world development since the late 1970s until the present time. The emphasis is on critically analyzing and assessing this interaction from alternative historical and theoretical perspectives.

This module introduces final year undergraduate students to a range of key issues in contemporary world politics, centred on conflict, rights, and justice, and to what extent developments in these issues reflect, or even drive, changes in the ‘liberal’ international order. The module considers the role of war and violence in contemporary international politics; international efforts to manage the occurrence and the conduct of armed conflict through laws and norms; and contestations over human rights, self-determination, migration and asylum, and accountability for war crimes and mass atrocities. It also considers the implications for management of global ‘peace and security’, and for individual and collective rights, of trends such as the ‘rise’ of nationalism; automated warfare and surveillance; and the increased international attention on women, children, and sexual violence in conflict. In particular the module emphasises the significance of race, class, and gender for understanding these.

This course introduces third year students in Politics degrees to diverse debates in gender and politics. Developed through a thematic, transnational approach, the module invites students to engage with majority world thinking on thematic questions and situate these intellectual debates within contemporary gender concerns. It asks, why is a gender lens important to the study of politics, international relations and international political economy, on the one hand, and how the study of these can help us understand gender relations under capitalism. It does so by examining both formal and informal institutions – states, markets, and non-state actors. It also asks why gender inequality is so intractable – why the struggles for equality between genders has resulted in a gender backlash. Finally, it introduces students to strategies that have been deployed to make change happen – both formally, through initiatives such as quotas in parliaments as well as informally, through social movements.

This is a unique undergraduate module focusing on Taiwan’s domestic politics. After an overview of Taiwan’s experience of authoritarian rule and democratic transition, the module has three main themes: Taiwan’s electoral and party politics, contested gender politics, and social movements.

In this module, students will study various conceptions of republicanism, empire and revolution in both western and anticolonial political thought. This module examines the republican language of political activism, virtue, liberty, equality, revolution and constitutional foundings. We will consider how the republican mixed constitution was deployed to promote social hierarchy and empire in some contexts, and radical equality and anti-imperialism in other contexts. Students will read about Roman, American, French, Haitian and Indian republicanism through the ideas of Cicero, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Thomas Paine, CLR James, Anna J. Cooper, Nehru, Arendt, Ambedkar, and others.

The Final Year Project allows students to develop an independent research and writing project on an approved topic and supervised by a member of academic staff in the Department.

This module introduces final year undergraduate students to a range of key issues in contemporary world politics, centred on conflict, rights, and justice, and to what extent developments in these issues reflect, or even drive, changes in the ‘liberal’ international order. The module considers the role of war and violence in contemporary international politics; international efforts to manage the occurrence and the conduct of armed conflict through laws and norms; and contestations over human rights, self-determination, migration and asylum, and accountability for war crimes and mass atrocities. It also considers the implications for management of global ‘peace and security’, and for individual and collective rights, of trends such as the ‘rise’ of nationalism; automated warfare and surveillance; and the increased international attention on women, children, and sexual violence in conflict. In particular the module emphasises the significance of race, class, and gender for understanding these.

In this module we will examine forms of global governance across a range of issue areas – including security, human rights, migration, and humanitarianism. Students will be asked to critically examine how power and hierarchy is being made and remade through the idea of global governance.

This module traces the history and politics of Palestine and the Zionist movement, within a regional and international context, from the late nineteenth century to the present. It examines Palestinian and Israeli understandings of the past and present through primary sources, scholarship, and cultural production. The module seeks to understand how and at what costs Israeli and Palestinian political institutions and nationalisms have been constructed and analyzes British and US involvement in the conflict. Key themes to be introduced and explored include imperialism, settler colonialism, nationalism, Orientalism, violence, anticolonialism, and revolution, all as understood by a variety of actors involved in the region.

This module provides a scholarly introduction to the politics of global migration, drawing on examples and case studies from around the world.

This module critically explores the international politics of 'security'. Its starting point is the recognition that the meaning of security - including whose security we are (or should be) talking about and what threatens this security - cannot be taken for granted. This has not only generated heated debates among scholars, but also shifted attention towards how political actors talk about 'security' and justify actions in its name. Positioned within this critical strand, this module addresses the contested nature of 'security' and provides students with the conceptual tools to see and analyse various empirical sites and practices of 'securitization'.

The climate crisis is clearly one of the primary existential threats facing the human species. But how we understand the roots of the climate crisis, its current and future impacts on world politics, and its possible solutions, is inherently contested terrain. Nothing less than the future of life on earth, and competing conceptions of the ‘good life’ and how we should organize our societies, is at stake. This course will investigate the global politics of the climate crisis, starting with scientific debates regarding the possible severity of climate change (how bad could it get?), and then moving through questions about climate governance, the political economy of climate change, the energy and food system transitions, migration, geoengineering, possible global futures, and activism. We can hardly hope to exhaust such a complex topic in the span of 10 weeks. Instead, we will cover some key topics and hear from a wide range of perspectives. The goal will be to give students a basic grounding in the science, politics, and economics of climate change; to enable them to critically engage with a multiple perspectives on the key causes and possible solutions to the climate crisis; and to help them think through its implications for their own lives and futures.

This is a unique undergraduate module focusing on Taiwan’s relations with China and its international politics. Against the background of the island’s international relations during the period of the Cold War, lectures will explore Taiwan’s search for international space since the 1970s, as well as the evolution of cross-Strait relations under the administrations of Chen Shui-bian (2000-08), Ma Ying-jeou (2008 to 2016), and the newly-elected DPP president Tsai Ing-wen.

Decolonisation was a set of historical processes that radically transformed international politics in practice and thought. The emergence of a world of sovereign states - a core premise for International Relations - is founded on the assumed completion of such processes. Yet increasingly, research in the field points to a number of ongoing theoretical, methodological and practical issues that result from the colonial and post-colonial constitution of global order. This module asks what it means to 'decolonise International Relations' by engaging with the challenges posed by anti-colonial, post-colonial and de-colonial thinkers on such issues. We will do so by critically examining the complexity and diversity of anti-colonial movements and thinkers, mainly in Anglophone contexts. We will study colonialism and anti-colonialism as international and transnational in thought and practice by exploring how both the colonised and the coloniser were transformed by decolonisation. We will also consider the contemporary relevance of decolonisation by looking at the condition of postcolonialism. In addition we will examine the intersections between 'race', gender and class.

To what extent is the leader of a country free to make their own decisions, unconstrained by the material power at their disposal, the governmental bureaucracies they are trying to work through, the experts that surround them or their own socially constructed perceptions? How does a small state set its foreign policy agenda? What does it mean if a state proclaims a feminist foreign policy? What is the role of secrecy in foreign policy? These are a selection of questions we will cover in this module. There are contending approaches within Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). FPA is a sub-field of International Relations, but also an object of analysis which is constituted and transformed by a variety of actors, practices and organisational structures. This raises the important question of how to study the multiple dimensions of foreign policy and who has the power to shape it. Each week's topic will attend to an important dimension of foreign policy, covering central actors, bureaucratic practices, issues and foreign policy tools. The module will also decentre the traditional focus on the US, which has dominated much of FPA scholarship.