Politics and International Relations, BA (Hons)

Our world is a complex, interconnected yet contradictory place, marked by progress in connectivity alongside challenges like war, disease, and intolerance. This Politics and International Relations degree at NTU equips you with critical skills to navigate misinformation and divisive narratives, emphasizing leadership, communication, and creativity. Core modules provide theoretical foundations, while electives allow specialization in areas such as global migration, climate change, and emerging powers. Practical experiences include working with activist groups, placements, and campaign design.Studying in Nottingham's vibrant, multicultural environment, you'll engage in real-world projects, simulations, and optional language learning in languages like Arabic or Mandarin. An optional year abroad or placement enhances your development. Assessments feature a mix of essays, presentations, and policy briefs, with feedback aimed at building academic and professional skills. This versatile degree prepares you for careers in diplomacy, lobbying, or community leadership, fostering intellectual courage and global awareness.

This degree is for the politically curious, the global visionaries, and the change-makers. With a blend of rigorous theory and exciting, hands-on practice, we’ll nurture you as an academic, a critic, a socially and politically conscious citizen, and — most importantly of all — a person. At NTU, we dare you to be different: to show the intellectual courage, independence and adaptability that’ll guide your future career. Our politics and international relations course unpacks the big and the small, the local and the global, the remarkable and the everyday. Explore the nature of international relationships, and how those relationships can influence things like economic and foreign policy, laws, human rights, security, and governance; assess the political factors that determine elections and leadership contests; examine the economics of daily life, whether that’s the lifecycle of a single cup of coffee, or how (and why) a particular mobile phone ends up in your hand. Through our fascinating range of optional modules, you can take a deep dive into everything from pandemics, poverty, climate change, security, and Brexit, to worldwide migration trends, instability in the European project, the politicisation of everyday life, and the emerging political powers in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. It’s your course, and your call. We’ll be encouraging you to look at the world differently, through more informed, balanced, and critically aware eyes. We’ll be asking you to explore and assess your own values and beliefs — to make the familiar unfamiliar. Here’s a breakdown of the core and optional modules you’ll be studying across your course: Year One modules include Study and Research Skills, Politics and International Relations in Practice, Media, Power and Truth, British Politics and Beyond and Politics. Year Two modules include Social Research, Careers and Experience in Politics and International Relations and UK Parliamentary Studies. Optional modules include Contemporary European Politics, Justice, Ethics and Democracy, Security Studies, The Politics of Art, Film and Literature, Environmental Politics and Policy and Global Political Marketing. You may choose to take an optional year-long placement in Year Three, either in the UK or overseas. You will be supported by our experienced Employability Team to source a suitable placement. Final Year modules include a Dissertation and Leadership, Activism and Campaigning module. Optional modules include British Politics in Uncertain Times, Negotiating in International Contexts, US Politics and Policy, End of the Liberal Order, Political Violence and Terror, Global Politics of Pop Culture, Feminist Thought and Praxis, East of the West: Eurasian geopolitics, Emerging Powers of Asia, Globalisation in Crisis, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean in World Politics and The International Relations of Middle East and North Africa.