Browse Hierarchy INRL4001: Introduction to International Relations 1: Perspectives

This module provides an introduction to International Relations, with a focus on history, theories and perspectives. As an academic discipline, International Relations has emerged from a particular (cultural and historic) set of perspectives and concerns and this module will aim to introduce you to the defining debates of the discipline in this context via following the different interpretations of selected historical events. But, as a discipline that seeks to inform and is informed by global politics 'in practice' - and all the debates around this (ranging from what counts as important if we seek to better understand our world to what is possible if there are aspects of it we would like to change) - it is also a discipline that is regularly subject to challenges from within the world of academia and without. One such challenge, which will be discussed throughout the module, can be found in the charge that International Relations is a 'Western' discipline that leaves out the experience and history of people outside of the Western world. Focusing on this and other challenges, this module will seek to introduce International Relations or global politics more broadly as a realm of contestation - as a field of competing perspectives and stories about our world and what is possible within it.