MSc International Relations

Loughborough University

The aims of this module are to: Provide students with an opportunity to be exposed to project-based teamwork in diverse settings (understood in this context as involving a range of multidisciplinary, multicultural and demographic elements in differing configurations), aiming to strengthen their cooperative and collaborative working skills and competence, while raising awareness and appreciation of diversity itself. Provide students with hands on experience of identifying, framing and resolving practice oriented and real-world based challenges and problems, using creativity, critical enquiry and appropriate tools to achieve valuable and relevant solutions. Support the development of students' ability to engage in critical enquiry and individual reflection, as well as to apply individual strengths and skills, building on their own educational backgrounds. Provide students with opportunities for networking with stakeholders, organisations and corporations, aiming to enhance the competence and skills needed to connect to relevant parties and build up future professional opportunities.

The aim of this module is to introduce students to the evolution and change in diplomatic practice in the contemporary digital age through a range of cases and issues from across world. The main objectives are: A) To equip students with theoretical approaches, concepts and debates enabling the critical interrogation of diplomacy in the digital age; its promises and its drawbacks; and its relationship with power, knowledge production, networks, gender, voice, and communication; while also critically appraising the relationship between digital diplomacy and democracy. In so doing, it aims to uncover the role of both state and non-state actors (individuals, activists, journalists, influencers, diasporas, charities, corporations, minorities) in digital diplomacy demonstrating that widening engagement means widening the agenda.

The aims of this module are to give the student the opportunity to study a subject, business problem or research question in depth and to research the issues surrounding the subject or background to the problem. The module will equip the student with the relevant skills, knowledge and understanding to embark on their individual research project and they will be guided through the three options available to them to complete their dissertation: A desk based research project that could be set by an organisation or could be a subject of the student's choic A project that involves collection of primary data from within an organisation or based on lab and/or field experiments, A full professional placement within an organisation during which time they will complete a project as part of their role in agreement with the organisation (subject to a suitable placement position being obtained). Students will achieve a high level of understanding in the subject area and produce a written thesis or project report which will discuss this research in depth and with rigour.

The aim of this module is for students to understand the conceptual tools of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), acquire specific knowledge relevant to an understanding of the foreign policies of key state actors in the global arena, and develop awareness of the issues and policy contexts that shape these policies.

The past forty years has witnessed an unprecedented growth in cities in both the developed and developing world. This module will introduce students to the concepts and theories of global cities and the politics, governance, economics, society, security and international relations issues connected to them. The central case study will be London, but students will research other cities to examine the main debates and controversies surrounding cities and their place in the world.

The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and the Changing World Order aims to introduce students to the way the rise of the BRICS at the turn of the 21st century has come to challenge the Western-led order in world politics. The module will focus on each of the five BRICS countries and investigate how the evolution of their domestic and foreign policies has influenced their rise in world politics.