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Dr Luca Tardelli CBG 10.05

Prof. Peter Trubowitz CBG 10.16

This course is compulsory on the BSc in International Relations. This course is available on the BSc in International Relations and History and BSc in Politics and International Relations. This course is not available as an outside option nor to General Course students.

Students who have this course as a compulsory course are guaranteed a place.

This course provides an opportunity to gain an analytically deeper understanding and reflect critically upon some of the most topical issues that currently confront international relations and which shape the development of the contemporary international order. These include but are not limited to: the war in Ukraine and tensions between Russia and the West; violent conflict in the Middle East; US foreign policy under President Joe Biden; European security and the future of NATO; challenges to multilateral cooperation and liberal internationalism; China’s growing involvement in Africa; the use of armed drones; international financial crises; climate change and environmental security; and migration and refugee crises. The course encourages students to engage in debating the nature of, and possible responses to, contemporary challenges and crises in international politics. The course complements IR100 with a more applied policy focus, while emphasising the need for critical analytical depth when reflecting on the origins, nature and implications of current affairs. Students will develop an awareness of the relationship between the discipline of International Relations as a field of knowledge and the practices of world politics.

This course is delivered through a combination of classes and lectures totalling a minimum of 40 hours across Autumn Term and Winter Term.

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term and Winter Term, in line with departmental policy.

Students will be expected to work on 1 formative opinion piece and deliver a short class presentation in the AT. Students will then be expected to produce 1 formative policy memo in the WT and submit the outline of their summative policy memo in the WT. 

Hubert Zimmermann, Milena Elsinger, and Alex Burkhardt, International Relations: Theories in Action (Sage, 2024).

Jenny Edkins and Maja Zehfuss (eds), Global Politics: A New Introduction (Routledge: 2019)

​Mary Kaldor and Iavor Rangelov (eds), The Handbook of Global Security Policy (Wiley-Blackwell: 2014).

Policy memo (70%) in the ST.
Class participation (10%) in the AT and WT.
Group presentation (20%) in the AT.

Participation in the class discussion will be assessed throughout the year (10% of the final mark). Students will also give a group presentation on a particular issue or problem by the end of the AT (20%). Finally, students on the course will write a 2,500 word 'policy memo' (70%) on a particular contemporary issue.