Department of International Politics

The Department has developed internationally-renowned research strengths in:

• International Relations
• foreign policy and diplomacy
• human rights
• international peace and security
• Comparative Politics
• political change
• leadership
• migration
• international political economy.

• Read our Research Statement

In the recent Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, which measures the quality and impact of research in universities across the UK, 85% of our research was rated as being of 4* (world-leading) and 3* (internationally excellent) quality. This ranks us as one of the leading Departments in the UK for the quality of our research.

We have established three thriving research centres:

• City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC)
• Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS)
• Centre for Modern History

This helps to create a dynamic and vibrant environment for academics, research students, partners and collaborators who work with us, and we offer excellent facilities for visiting scholars and researchers.

Activities

Our academics are frequently called upon to provide expertise and comment on areas including:

• Political economy and global finance
• Foreign policy and diplomacy
• Global ethics and international human rights
• The politics of the US, the Middle East and Europe
• Security Studies
• Religion in contemporary politics
• Forced population displacement
• International development
• Global civil society and social movements.

We actively engage in various international research networks which enhance both academic understanding and international policy-making.

• Professor Ronen Palan was the Principal Investigator on a €1.7million CORPLINK project funded by the European Research Council’s Advanced Grant and a €5million COFFERS (Combating Financial Fraud and Empowering Regulators) project funded by Horizon 2020
• Professor Ronen Palan and Professor Anastasia Nesvetailova are members of the Global Shadow Banking Group
• Professor Inderjeet Parmar is co-editor of the Routledge Studies in US Foreign Policy book series and was the Principal Investigator of the Research Network on the Presidency of Barack Obama funded by the Arts and Humanities Council
• Dr Christopher McDowell is a member the Counter Terrorism Advisory Group (CTAG) at the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism HQ
• Dr Kseniya Oksamytna was a Co-Investigator on a £545,000 “Democratization and Peacebuilding” project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council
• Professor Amnon Aran is the academic editor of the Routledge Foreign Policy Analysis book series
• Dr Konstantin Vössing received funding from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to conduct lab experiments, a survey experiment, and quantitative text analysis on public opinion about European integration
• Dr Amin Samman is a Visiting Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at the University of Heidelberg working on a project “Nihilism and the Ends of Finance” and a Leverhulme Research Fellowship “Economies of Desire in the Twenty-first Century”
• Dr Sara Silvestri is a Trustee of the Council on Christian Approaches on Defense and Disarmament.

Professor Amnon Aran is Head and Dr Kseniya Oksamytna is Deputy Head of the Department of International Politics.