Nottingham is one of the largest departments of politics and international relations in the UK, with almost 40 academic staff, including twelve full professors. The School’s academic staff are nationally and internationally recognised experts in their areas of research.
They publish in the leading academic and university presses, and the School edits several leading academic journals. This means that the staff who teach you are all active in producing research – and we are proud that our teaching is driven and informed by our research.
We attract the very best students from the UK and abroad, and offer a range of challenging and broad programmes of study. A key feature of all of our degree programmes is an unusually wide range of specialist modules, taught by staff with national and international reputations and who have considerable research and policy experience.
A politics graduate from Nottingham is highly sought after in the job market, or well-placed to progress to graduate study. Whatever your long-term plans, we aim to provide a stimulating and supportive environment for all our students.
All our degrees are modular. Certain courses are compulsory but others can be chosen from a wide range of options, allowing you to tailor your degree to fit your interests. In the first year, in addition to core Politics modules, students will take some of their modules from outside the School, from the hundreds on offer in languages, history, law, sociology, English, economics, geography, or whatever interests you. Later years allow some choice from outside the School (depending on the degree studied) along with plenty of choice from within the School, choosing from a large range of specialist modules.
Our current third year, for example, allows students to choose from nearly 30 different modules, covering subjects of interest to every student. Those taking joint degrees will find a similar choice available in the other part of their degree.
All our courses include the possibility of studying abroad, typically during the second year, studying through our Universitas 21 or Erasmus exchange schemes.