The modules on our International Relations MSc have been carefully put together to give you the most up-to-date and relevant set of skills and knowledge for progressing in your chosen career.
Compulsory modules
Diplomacy in the Digital World (15 credits)
The aim of this module is to introduce students to the evolution and change in diplomatic practice in the contemporary digitised world, through a range of conceptual tools, cases and issue areas. The main objectives are:
A) To equip students with theoretical approaches, concepts and debates enabling the critical interrogation of diplomacy in the contemporary digitised world through theoretical and empirical exploration of the relationship of diplomacy to the following key organising categories: sovereignty, representation, communication, power, knowledge production, gender, and sustainability. In so doing, it aims to uncover the role of both state and non-state actors in diplomacy in the contemporary digitised world, thus adopting an enlarged approach to diplomacy, entailing diplomacies in the plural--of multiple actors, in multiple issue areas, and of multiple modalities.
B) To showcase skills and various ways of being a diplomat in the contemporary digital world, through introducing and unpacking the real-life applications of such skills and ways, integrating practitioner contributions where possible; as well as through examining various and often overlooked pathways of practicing diplomacy (such as public diplomacy, paradiplomacy, protodiplomacy, NGO and advocacy diplomacy).
Negotiation - Strategy, Skills and Leadership (15 credits)
The aim of this module is to understand the main features, concepts and practices of international negotiations. It provides an overview of the most important elements of negotiation and offers an application to a number of case studies
Grand Challenges (15 credits)
The aim of this module is to give students an opportunity to explore grand challenges facing our global society and to propose imaginative solutions to specific challenges in one or more country.
Students will critically reflect on the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals and think about how Loughborough University's Creating Better Futures. Together Strategy might contribute to them.
Students will engage with ideas and approaches to possible solutions from their own programme and gain diverse insights from Loughborough University London's interdisciplinary ecosystem. This will involve solution-oriented thinking and a balance between criticality and possibility, leading to a deep understanding of grand challenges and imagining creative responses to them.
Optional modules
One of:
Sport, Politics, and Diplomacy (15 credits)
The aim of this module is to understand the role that sport plays in political and diplomatic issues at a national and international level. Using contemporary examples from developed, transitioning, developing, and fuel-based economies, the module will explore how sport can be used to positive (e.g., facilitating socio-economic plans) or negative (e.g., whitewashing human rights violations) ends. In doing so, the module aims to promote a critical, evidence-based understanding of the interplay between sport, politics, and diplomacy.
International Business in Contexts (15 credits)
The aims of this module are to equip students with the necessary academic skills to understand the challenges firms face in different developing countries and assessing different ways in which firms can overcome these challenges.
Compulsory modules
International Relations and Security in the Age of Polycrises (15 credits)
The overarching aim of the module is to provide students with a wider understanding of theories and debates in International Relation and Security through a specialised focus on the emerging concept, debates and practices around polycrisis. Traditional and critical theories of IR and security serve multiple lenses through which to interrogate and critique polycrisis while simultaneously critically assessing whether and in what ways they might be adequate, obsolete, deficient or else affording analytical and practical opportunities for making sense of the polycrisis and steering its understanding towards sustainable social change.
Dissertation (60 credits)
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 choice
- 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.
Optional modules
One of:
Strategies and Challenges in the World Order (15 credits)
The module aims to introduce students to the way the changing nature of world order has affected societies globally. Transformations in the world order have brought to the fore risks and challenges that indiscriminately impact peoples around the world. The module explores the nature of these transformations, namely the agency and autonomy that individuals have in mitigating change. Key emphasis will be placed on the identifying the most successful strategies that societies have designed and implemented in order to adapt to changes in the world order.
Some of the most important challenges derived from the evolution of the world order that the module aims to discuss include conflict and geopolitics, global inequality, innovation and progress, resilience and sustainability or migration.
The experience of societies in the Global South will be given greater consideration, with a special focus on the impact that the BRICS group of states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) has on the world order. In broader terms, the module evaluates the various strategies that states, international organisations, businesses or NGOs have developed in order to cope with change in the world order.
Media, Social Movements and Identities (15 credits)
Social movements and identities are deeply intertwined with media, communication, and cultural systems. In this module, we will critically examine the complex relationships between media, social movements, and identities. We will explore key conceptual debates on social identities - including gender, sex, class, race, ethnicity, and nationality, and analyse how these identities have become central to social movements.
Through this exploration, we will investigate the role of media in representing and shaping identities, articulating social movements, and influencing changes in our understanding of both. By engaging with theoretical perspectives and case studies, this module will provide students with the analytical tools to assess the impact of media on identity politics and collective action.
It is designed as an interdisciplinary module, welcoming students from diverse academic backgrounds and skill sets. Its assessments cater to students who are comfortable with conceptual thinking and are interested in producing accessible and creative outputs.
Artificial Intelligence and Society: Learning to Live with Machines (15 credits)
Advances in machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing are forging new responses to global challenges from climate change to the creation of resilient supply chains. A.I. is also changing how creative industries innovate and transforming performance analytics and injury prediction in sport.
Despite its extraordinary potential, A.I. raises profound concerns about the displacement of jobs, the respect for privacy and intellectual property and the risks of algorithmic discrimination. The growing possibility of general A.I. also poses fundamental questions about the future of humanity in a world of super intelligence.
The aim of this module is to examine the evolving societal consequences of A.I. and to explore how governments, international organisations and civil society groups are trying to create safe, secure, and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems.
One of:
Cities in Diplomacy and International Affairs (15 credits)
Cities and large urban areas are home to more than half of humanity and generate over 80% of global economic activity. Consequently, cities have become leading actors in diplomacy and critical hubs of international and domestic political, economic, technological, social, cultural, and security developments. This module examines the role of cities in international affairs, exploring both their capacities as influential actors and the diverse issues associated with them.
Using London as the central case study, students will research other cities to examine the issues and theories presented in the module and write about these cities in their assessment. The module will cover topics such as theoretical approaches to global cities, the history and evolution of cities, ideas and models of how cities act in international and domestic affairs, and the main political, economic, social and security issues connected to them.
The module will also allow students to better understand London, the city they have chosen to study in, and the central place in international affairs of many of the cities most of them will spend their lives living and working in.
Peace and Conflict Transformation (15 credits)
The aims of this module are to:
- To introduce, compare and contrast traditional and critical approaches to peace and conflict transformation;
- To undertake empirical case studies, in lectures and via readings and class discussion, as a means of illustrating and critically interrogating competing theories, concepts and debates on intervention, success and failure of contemporary approaches to peace and conflict transformation;
- Introduce and interrogate recent trends in the practice of conflict transformation, and assess their political and ethical implications.
Research Approaches in International Affairs, Development and Social Change (15 credits)
The aims of this module are to:
- enable students to become familiar with a comprehensive range of research methods and techniques relevant to the investigation of international development practices as well as social change and social justice policies and mobilizations;
- generate insight and understanding of how different methodologies dialogue with different epistemological perspectives, aligned to specific research paradigms or philosophies.
One of:
Collaborative Project (15 credits)
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.
Learning from the Global South: Field Trip (15 credits)
This module has two main aims. The first is to expose students to concrete development challenges experienced by different stakeholders (policy makers, communities and industry representatives, etc) in developing countries.
The second is to experiment with the ways through which the immersion into the field can inform the identification of development challenges and the formulation of research questions and action plans in the area of development.
Note that there are additional travel costs involved in taking this module.
Compulsory modules
Dissertation (60 credits)
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 choice
- 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.