BA (Hons) INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Overview

Mode	Duration	Start date	Application code	Application method
ModeFull-time	Duration3 years	Start dateSeptember	Application code5784	Application method UCAS

International students

The course is not currently open to international students.

International (non Home) applicants should follow our international how to apply guide.

Home/EU applicants

Mode	Duration	Start date	Application code	Application method
Mode Full-time	Duration 3 years	Start date September	Application code 5784	Application method UCAS

Accommodation

Once we have made you an offer, you can apply for accommodation. You can rent from LSBU and you’ll deal directly with the university, not third party providers. That means we can guarantee you options to suit all budgets, with clear tenancy agreements and all-inclusive rents that include insurance for your personal belongings, internet access in each bedroom and on-site laundry facilities.

Or, if you’d rather rent privately, we can give you a list of landlords – just ask our Accommodation Service.

Read more about applying for accommodation at LSBU.

Finance

You don't need to wait for a confirmed place on a course to start applying for student finance. Read how to pay your fees as an undergraduate student.

Prepare to start

Applicant events

After you’ve received your offer we’ll send you emails about events we run to help you prepare for your course.

Enrolment

Before you start your course we’ll send you information on what you’ll need to do before you arrive and during your first few days on campus. You can read about the process on our Enrolment pages.

Modules cover an array of enticing topics. You’ll consider issues of equity, ethics, social justice, and global responsibility, as well as learning chief IR concepts, theories and perspectives. Other topics include sustainability and climate change, and citizenship and nationality.

Year 1

Semester 1

• International Society: Conflict, Revolution and Empire
  This module examines key moments in international history to introduce some of the building blocks that make up the current international system. The module is concerned with historical events from around the globe and seeks to include perspectives and experiences from the global south. Such events and concepts include the emergence of democracy and the Glorious Revolution, empire building and colonialism, struggles for liberation, such as the Haitian revolution, and 9/11 and the war on terror.
• Political Ideas in Practice
  This module introduces students to key concepts in political thought and contextualise them in contemporary political events, movements, systems and institutions. These include power, justice, race/racism, rights and equality. These ideas and concepts are explored with reference to the social and historical contexts in which they developed, and students will also be encouraged to explore the way that these ideas and concepts have been transformed historically and the manner in which they are mobilised in contemporary political debates. Part of the module will be devoted to the exploration of the contribution that political theory can make to contemporary issues and controversies.
• Social Sciences in a Contemporary World: Themes, Concepts and Higher Education Skills
  This module provides an introduction to the study of social sciences and their global significance through an examination of key concepts and approaches to the subject. Each year, the subject matter will explore topical issues, current examples of which include the rise of #BLM, COP26 and climate change and sustainability. The selected issues will form the basis for the development of academic literacy and higher education skills in weekly workshops.

Semester 2

• International Relations in Theory and Practice
  This module introduces students to contemporary global issues and theoretical perspectives of International Relations that will be further developed during their studies. Each theoretical perspective will be studied alongside a real world issue to illustrate how the theory works, how theory informs our ideas about the world and teach students the usefulness of theories in IR. The content is not fixed, but will be amended each year to reflect innovation in the discipline of IR as well as real-world controversies and events, such as Brexit, the global management of COVID-19, the Global Right and the rise of populist leaders and conspiracies.
• State, Society and Institutions
  This module engages with political institutions and decision making at local, national and international levels to develop students’ understanding of and engagement with political processes. Key state institutions, and their relations with civil society, are analysed and evaluated. The module also explores democracy and political processes beyond the formal realm, including the role of media and pressure groups in shaping governance and policy making. While the focus of the module is largely national, the impact of the international sphere is also explored.
• Social Justice in Action
  This module develops students’ understanding of the concept of social justice (as a goal and a process) and its wider implications. The module also encourages students to focus on their interests, motivations, skills and abilities in employability terms and make connections between their studies and their future careers. Central to the module is a career and networking event. This event will provide students with the opportunity to meet and speak with individuals working in organisations concerned with social justice, particularly individuals who have themselves overcome challenges relating to their gender, race, class, age, sexuality, religion etc. Front line staff such as police officers, probation officers, social workers; activists, campaign work, researchers to voluntary sector representatives will be involved. Alumni will also contribute to the event.

Year 2

Semester 1

• Foreign Policy Analysis
  This module introduces students to the study of decision-making in international relations and foreign policy case-studies. It looks at how international, domestic and individual pressures shape the decisions leaders make toward other states, regional and non-state actors. The module will discuss conceptual matters, gradually building a toolkit of theoretical approaches that explain how foreign policy is imagined and implemented. Later the module works through a series of detailed case studies, covering the foreign policy of key international actors and regions like the US, the UK, the EU, China, Israel and Latin America.
• Social Research Methods
  This module introduces students to key concepts, methods and techniques used in social research. Students learn how to evaluate the methodological choices of researchers and to conduct their own social research. Students are introduced to both qualitative methods in the first half and quantitative methods in the second half. Within each half the module focuses on evaluative criteria (e.g. ethics and measurement validity) for social research, data collection methods (e.g. qualitative interviews and surveys) and data analytic methods (e.g. grounded theory and statistical methods).

Plus optional modules from:

• Decolonisation and Legacies of the British Empire
  The contested legacies of the British empire shape both Britain and thespaces it formerly colonised. This module allows students to explore the social, cultural, political and economic impact of British imperialism across a range of geographies, as well as their interconnectedness past and present. Post-colonial theory will serve as a basis for understanding how the history of colonialism has shaped ideas about race and nation, and material realities in the colonies and the metropole. Students will consider the impact of empire on the colonised communities that lived through and with it, including the issues relating to religious and ethnic identities, the division of land and the establishment of new nations. Students will also consider how the experience of empire has shaped the politics of whiteness in the present.
• Gender, Sexualities and Society  
  This module focuses on sociological understandings of the related concepts, gender and sexuality. It offers comprehensive theoretical overviews of gender and sexuality. It challenges the binary distinction of gender construction by exploring alternatives such as transgender and gender fluidity. The module explores the intersections of gender and sexuality with race, ethnicity, social class and geographic location and how they can reproduce inequalities. An in-depth approach to the study of gender and sexuality is provided by covering the following areas: masculinities, femininities, bodies and sexualities: homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality and their historical, cultural, social and political dimensions.
• Contemporary Policy Making
  This module introduces students to social policy, covering the mechanisms, actors, and organisations involved in policymaking. It will look at the frameworks within which policy makers act. The module will encourage students to apply and develop their understanding of policy through following contemporary social policy issues as they unfold during the module.  Students will analyse and critique the developments in their areas of interest during the course of the module.  By engaging with policymakers and policy processes, students will gain practical experience of seeking to make and shape policy.

Semester 2

• Contemporary Issues in International Development
  This module will provide a comprehensive and detailed introduction to the international development, and the contemporary challenges facing developing countries. It draws on innovative real world examples, addresses multiple perspective on development – such as gender -  and engages with development practitioners throughout the module to provide students with cutting edge, industry relevant, knowledge. Topics will vary from one year to the next to maintain contemporary relevance, but contemporary topics covered include poverty reduction; climate change and the global COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent events. The course also assesses the main development strategies followed by selected middle and low-income countries, with detailed case studies drawn from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
• Working in the Social Sciences
  This module provides an opportunity for students to work in settings related to their studies and, more generally, gain meaningful workplace experience in which to apply their social scientific learning. It will also reinforce their studies through the application and integration of relevant workplace experience into the academic context. Voluntary and community sector organisations, charities, academic research and most political organisations are particularly suitable for work placements, although much can also be learned from placements in commercial settings. Students who do not secure a formal external placement will form groups to work on an applied project related to LSBUs 9 identified UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Plus optional modules from:

• Environmental Justices, Sustainability and Climate Crisis
  This module addresses the social and political dimensions of ecology. It examines defining features of the concept of (environmental) sustainability, introducing various political perspectives. We will see how local and global environmental risks demand new forms of urban, national and international governmentality. The module will discuss how societies affect and are affected by changes in the natural environment. Finally, we will engage with how climate change impacts on our understanding of time, including how we imagine the end of the world. Throughout the module, we will research and look at the activities of organisations and movements involved in environmental sustainability.
• Political Ideologies
  This module explores what is meant by ‘ideology’ in academic debate as well as in concrete political and social settings. While considering the challenges inits definition it aims to encourage students to reflect upon the relevance and importance of ideology as an organising principle in contemporary societies across the global north and south. The module will enable students to understand and analyse different political arguments in their wider contemporary national and international context ideological context and gain nuanced understanding of the of the cultural, and social embeddedness of political actions, discourses and rhetoric.
• Rising Powers and World Order
  This module explores the key features of world orders, and the transitions between them, since the demise of Pax Britannica. It analyses the period of rivalry between the major powers (1875-1945), and, in particular, the era of Cold War bi-polarity and Pax Americana (1945-1990). Post-Cold War developments, including the rise of China and the debate on US empire and hegemony, are a major focus of the module. Contemporary patterns of international disorder, including the developing multi-polarity, are also explored. The debate on the conditions for the break-through of rising powers will be addressed throughout the module.

Year 3

Semester 1

• Research project (double module)
  This level six double module covers two semesters and consists of the research for and completion of an academic project with a 9,000 word limit. Each student chooses a subject relevant to the study of International Relations in which they wish to specialize, and then uses the skills and knowledge that they have accumulated and developed through modules studied at previous levels to undertake and complete the project. During the whole process, from choice of subject to final submission, each student will have the support and guidance of a supervisor allocated for this purpose.
• International Security
  This module introduces students to the study of international security at Level 6, covering a wide spectrum of security issues, including the causes and consequences of civil wars for IR, the impact of terrorism and counter-terrorism, and the idea of ‘culture wars’. The second part of this module offers a detailed grounding in the theory and practice of international security by exploring conceptual matters in (critical) security studies such as the debate between ‘narrowing’ or ‘widening’ the scope of security. One of the central aims of the module is to encourage students to historicise and think critically about contemporary constructions of ‘security’, somehowagainstthe narrower field of ‘strategic studies’, concerned with particular weapons systems and their use in particular wars.

Plus optional modules from:

• Politics of the Middle East
  This module aims to provide an introduction to the politics of the Middle East since the twentieth century, including their regional and international dimension. It locates contemporary political issues and processes within their historical contexts, and considers political, economic, and social changes that have affected the region.  In doing so it aims to provide students with detailed empirical knowledge and with the cognitive skills necessary to interpret and analyse that information.  including the roles played by powerful external forces, notably (but not exclusively) the United States in the post-1945 era. It understands politics in the broad sense of the organisation and dynamics of state-society complexes rather than in the traditional sense of the actions of state bodies and actors.
• Visualising the World: Images, Technology, and Social Change
  We live in a visual and technologically driven world; the images that surround us  shape how we positions ourselves within, and act on, society, from global to local levels. This module provides students with a methodological, practical, theoretical and empirical understanding of visual politics, and specifically how images influence the way in which we understand what problems exist and how they must be tackled. Focusing on these questions within a framework of conflict and social change, the module gives studentsa chance to develop their own visual account of the world they live in and examine the disruptive possibilities this entails.
• Sustainability: Agents for Change
  This module offers a learning space to develop an understanding of the climate crisis, explore links between ecology and human activity and examines individual and institutional behavioural change. The module begins with the individual self and moves the introspection to the local and then to the global, providing a sense of place for the individual in the global context. The module themes will include: philosophical overview, global ecology; carbon literacy; lifestyle impact, individual and global impact; eco-psychology, mental health and the psycho-cultural causes of ecological breakdown, ecological and social justice and institutional organisational change using theSDG framework.

Semester 2

• Research Project (continued)
• Diplomacy and  Conflict Resolution
  This module examines the historical, theoretical, normative and practical aspects of diplomacy and conflict resolution. Having defined the key concepts, the module explores a range of approaches to the subject, including political, economic and legal approaches. Whilst the module considers the role of traditional actors, such as states and international institutions, this also closely examines a broad range of actors (e.g. civil society and youth) and approaches (e.g. memory, arts and local justice responses). Key topics covered include the nature, practice and history diplomacy and conflict resolution, and of mechanisms aligned with this, such as peace accords, negotiations, humanitarian intervention, peacebuilding and transitional justice.

Plus optional modules from:

• Politics and Protest
  This module will examine forms of social and political conflict characteristic of contemporary western societies. The main focus will be on understanding social movements and forms of political contention in the changing social structure of these societies. Although it has a contemporary western focus the course will situate discussion also in the context of historical and comparative material on social movements. The emphasis throughout however will be on examining the ability of social and political theory to understand the nature of political identity and its expression in social movements.
• Crimes of the Powerful
  This module explores the phenomena of state crime, corporate crime and the involvement of powerful social forces in human rights abuses. It examines the problems involved in conceptualising state crimes and human rights and looks at contemporary crimes against humanity, including in the area of environmental rights. The module also explores the problems involved in regulating and controlling state crime and human rights atrocities in which states and state officials play a key role. The critical engagement with globalization provides a framework within which students explore significant contemporary debates and developments.
• International Protection of Human Rights
  This module evaluates international human rights law and strategy in the context of real case studies.
• Challenges in Global Social Policy
  This module will take an in-depth look at some of the most significant issues in contemporary British Social Policy in recent times. It will use in-depth case studies, which chart the development of and previous attempts to solve policy issues, before looking at the current state of the field and future needs. Students will be able to develop detailed knowledge of areas of interest to them, and use this to deepen their knowledge of policy processes. Throughout the module, students will be encouraged to place the case studies within the context of social justice and British society.