Political Theory MA

Core modules:

Political Philosophy Research Seminar

This module is co-taught by lecturers from Philosophy and Politics. It is designed to develop your skills of close critical reading and philosophical discussion, and your ability to use political theorising to reflect on real world problems. Students will engage with a range of texts across active topics in the fields of Political Philosophy and Political Theory, discussing them together in a weekly two hour seminar. Each student will then be assessed on the basis of a writing project in Political Theory / Philosophy. Students will propose and develop their essay topics under the supervision of a lecturer in Philosophy or Politics.

30 credits

Dissertation

Contact department for more information.

60 credits

Please note, these modules change on a yearly basis.

Optional modules in Philosophy include the following:

Feminist and Queer Studies in Religion, Global Perspectives

This module applies feminism, queer studies and trans philosophy in analysis of genders and sexualities in religious traditions and cultures around the world. We willexamine deities and goddesses, gendered language in religions, cisheteropatriarchy, and LGBTQIA life in e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as wellas in Chinese, and Japanese cultures. We will discuss genders, rituals, spirituality, sexual practices, procreation, abstinence, and asexuality, reading a range of feminist,queer and trans philosophical works, and texts ranging from the Kama Sutra to Confucius and the Vatican documents, Scriptures, and empirical research. Assignmentsallow students in Philosophy, Humanities, and Social Sciences develop their expertise using their preferred methods and topics, on religions of their choice.

30 credits

Bodies and Souls

The course will focus on metaphysical themes of perennial interest such as parts and wholes, the nature of people, and the passage of time. Readings will be drawn mainly from recent and contemporary sources.

30 credits

The Science of Consciousness

Our memories of our personal past (i.e. our episodic memories) play animportant role in our lives. They help us perform mundane tasks like finding our keys, butthey arguably also form the foundation of our sense of self and personal identity. They let usknow who we are by recording what we've done and experienced. In this module we will tryto better understand what episodic memory is and to what extent it grounds our understandingof the self. This module will introduce students to the cognitive science of memory and tocore issues in the philosophical foundations of cognitive science.In the first part of the module, we will look at methodological issues that arise when weattempt to describe the mind's structure within philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. Inthe second part of the module, we will look towards the cognitive sciences to betterunderstand what sort of thing episodic memory is. In the final part of the module, we willconsider the relationship between episodic memory and our sense of the self.This is an interdisciplinary module. Understanding how the mind is structured is a complexproject. In order to make progress we need to appeal to both empirical and philosophicalwork (and work that blurs this distinction). We'll read scientific and philosophical papers;however, no prior knowledge of cognitive science (or neuroscience) will be presumed.

30 credits

Cognitive Studies Seminar

Cognitive science is a research field in which philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, computer science, and anthropology come together to discover how the mind works. This module aims to:
1. Introduce students to major theoretical issues in cognitive science.
2. Help students to see how empirical evidence drawn from different disciplines is relevant to key issues in cognitive science.
3. Equip students with an understanding of the philosophical importance of cognitive science.

30 credits

Guided Reading

This module is intended to enable students to develop a research project of their own, in a flexible manner. Each student on the module will be assigned a supervisor, with whom they will meet for one hour every two weeks. They will also be encouraged to attend those reading groups run in the department (of which there are typically about 10 per semester) which fit with their project. The objectives of the module are (i) to identify a suitable research topic, in consultation with the supervisor (ii) to develop this project through supervisions and drafts (iii) to complete the project.

30 credits

History of Philosophy

This module aims to introduce students to topics within the history of philosophy broadly conceived. Students will be encouraged to audit one of the following modules:

1. Ancient Chinese Philosophy 2. Plato's Symposium

Teaching will then be by way of weekly hour seminars [organised on the basis of the audited module] and supervision

30 credits

Bioethics

Bioethics arose in response to the moral challenges thrown up by technological advances of the twentieth century. As we move through the 21st century, new moral problems are emerging, even as old ones still concern us. How should we allocate resource for medical care and research? Are there limits to what can be done to our bodies, or does consent permit everything? In a pandemic, how should we balance concerns for liberty and protecting the vulnerable? Should we try to 'enhance' human beings, or should we be happy with the way we are? This module will introduce a range of practical bioethical problems, as well as some methods for approaching them. Our emphasis will be on doing philosophy practically, with a view to the implications of philosophical argument in the real world of healthcare, research and bioscience. 

30 credits

Philosophy Research Seminar

This module is focused on the careful examination and discussion of significant works in philosophy. The module aims to cover the full range of philosophy with texts being selected across different philosophical areas. The aim is then to familiarise students with these different areas and thereby give the students a broad understanding of the issues that are discussed within philosophy. The teaching format is in person discussion where the discussion will be largely conducted in small groups but will include some open class discussion.

30 credits

Philosophy of the Arts

This module introduces students to a broad range of issues in the philosophy of art. The first half asks 'What is art?'. It examines three approaches: expression theories, institutional accounts, and the cluster account. This is followed by two critiques focusing on the lack of women in the canon and problems surrounding 'primitive' art. The evolutionary approach to art is discussed, and two borderline cases: craft and pornography. The second half examines four issues: cultural appropriation of art, pictorial representation, aesthetic experience and the everyday, and the supposed link between artistic creativity and madness.

30 credits

Free Will & Religion

This module focuses on philosophical questions about the relationship between free will and religion. Historically, theistic religions have been dogged by questions concerning the nature of human agency, for instance on account of the traditional conception of God as omniscient and hence as having full foreknowledge. The module will examine philosophical conceptions of the relationship between religious states of affairs and positions regarding the status of human action, by considering relevant historical developments within theology and philosophy.

30 credits

Plato's Symposium

The Symposium is a vivid, funny and moving dramatic dialogue in which a wide variety of characters - orators, doctor, comic poet, tragic poet, soldier-cum-statesman, philosopher and others - give widely differing accounts of the nature of erotic love (eros) at a banquet. Students should be willing to engage in close textual study, although no previous knowledge of either ancient philosophy or ancient Greek is required. We will be exploring the origins, definition, aims, objects and effects of eros, and asking whether it is viewed as a predominantly beneficial or harmful force. Are some manifestations of eros better than others? Is re-channelling either possible or desirable, and if so, how and in what contexts? What happens to eros if it is consummated? We will in addition explore the issues that the dialogue raises about relations between philosophy and literature, and the influence it has had on Western thought (e.g. Freud). The edition we will use is Rowe, C. J., 1998, Plato Symposium. Oxford: Aris and Phillips Classical texts.

30 credits

Ethics and Society

This module aims to introduce students to topics within ethics and social philosophy broadly conceived. Students will be encouraged to audit one of the following modules:

1. People, Organisations and Technology2. Moral Theory and Moral Psychology3. Feminist and Queer Studies

30 credits

Philosophy of Law

Law is a pervasive feature of modern societies and governs most aspects of our lives. This module is about some of the philosophical questions raised by life under a legal system. The first part of the module investigates the nature of law. Is law simply a method of social control? For example, the group calling itself Islamic State issued commands over a defined territory and backed up these commands with deadly force. Was that a legal system? Or is law necessarily concerned with justice? Do legal systems contain only rules or do they also contain underlying principles? Is 'international law' really law?
The second part of the module investigates the relationship between law and individual rights. What kinds of laws should we have? Do we have the moral right to break the law through acts of civil disobedience? What is the justification of punishment? Is there any justification for capital punishment? Are we right to legally differentiate between intended crimes (like murder) and unintended crimes (like manslaughter), or does this involve the unjustified punishment of 'thought crime'? Are we right to legally differentiate between murder and attempted murder, despite the fact that both crimes involve the same intent to kill?

30 credits

Pain, Pleasure, and Emotions

In this module, we will discuss the nature of affective states like pleasures, pains, and emotions. We will focus on three problems: (1) The constitution problem: What all and only affective states have in common? E.g., what makes pains and joys, but not visual experiences, affective states? (2) The distinction problem: What makes each type of affective state the particular type it is? E.g., what makes an orgasm a sensory pleasure and fear an emotion? (3)The problem of affective phenomenology: Some affective states feel good, others feel bad. In virtue of what affective states have this distinctive phenomenal character?

30 credits

Phenomenology

This module introduces students to Phenomenology - a philosophical tradition in continental European philosophy, which is closely related to Existentialism. Phenomenology seeks to understand the human condition. Its starting-point is everyday experience, where this includes both mundane and less ordinary forms of experience such as those typically associated with conditions such as schizophrenia. Whilst Phenomenology encompasses a diverse range of thinkers and ideas, there tends to be a focus on consciousness as embodied, situated in a particular physical, social, and cultural environment, essentially related to other people, and existing in time. (This is in contrast to the disembodied, universal, and isolated notion of the subject that comes largely from the Cartesian tradition.) There is a corresponding emphasis on the world we inhabit as a distinctively human environment that depends in certain ways on us for its character and existence. Some of the central topics addressed by Phenomenology include: embodiment; ageing and death; the lived experience of oppression; human freedom; our relations with and knowledge of, other people; the experience of time; and the nature of the world. In this module, we will discuss a selection of these and related topics, examining them through the work of key figures in the Phenomenological Movement, such as Edmund Husserl, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Frantz Fanon, and Edith Stein.

30 credits

Global Justice

What are the demands of justice at the global level? On this module we will examine this question from the perspective of analytic, Anglo-American political philosophy. We will start by looking at some debates about the nature of global justice, such as whether justice demands the eradication of global inequalities. We will then turn to various questions of justice that arise at the global level, potentially including: how jurisdiction over territory might be justified; whether states have a right to exclude would-be immigrants; whether reparations are owed for past international injustices such as colonialism; and how to identify responsibilities for combating global injustice.

30 credits

Philosophical Problems I: People, Organisations and Technology

Much of moral and political philosophy is devoted to the study of people's relations to other people, or to political entities such as the state. Yet people also stand in morally significant relations mediated by other entities, such as charitable organisations, business corporations, and the products of information technology, including 'artificial intelligence'. This module introduces the student to some of the most important questions currently faced by human beings in our relation to artificial agents, whether in the guise of organisations or advanced technologies.

Questions discussed in the module will include: are organisations or machines capable of moral agency, and if so, are they candidates for the same kinds of responsibility as individual human beings? Do moral norms that apply to the relations between humans, such as truthfulness or integrity, apply equally to organisations or information technology? To what extent do our relationships with organisations and technology undermine individual freedom or autonomy and our sense who we are? Does the development of large-scale organisations or the technological advances promised by artificial intelligence represent an opportunity for ecological preservation and control, or is it an existential threat to existing ecosystems and human life as we know it?

In this module, these and similar questions are addressed by the application of philosophical theory to real world examples.

30 credits

PhD Proposal

To provide both general and subject-specific research training for those intending to pursue research in philosophy or political theory. There is a short course dealing with topics such as study and writing skills, choosing and planning a research project; conducting a literature search, delivering a seminar presentation and chairing a discussion. Students also meet with their research supervisor to plan and produce a detailed PhD proposal and annotated bibliography (6,000 to 8,000 words), outlining their proposed project and locating it in relation to established positions in the discipline.

30 credits

Politics optional modules:

Contemporary Global Security

You will explore the changing character of contemporary global (in)security. Throughout, you will examine the proliferation of discourses and practices of security and threat in contemporary society, to encompass issues as wide ranging as climate change, migration, technology and human rights. In doing so, you will trace the evolution of security studies from a narrow sub-discipline focused on inter-state war and the military security of the nation-state, to one increasingly willing to question and challenge its own assumptions. The module invites you to think critically about the function of 'security', and to reflect on the ethical and analytical assumptions that shape how security is thought about, theorised, and practiced in International Relations.

You will be introduced to a range of advanced theoretical lenses and debates about security, exploring key concepts in security studies and how they might help us to make sense of security politics. As part of this, we will apply these debates to understand and analyse real world problems that are or might be considered issues of security, through case studies on issues such as terrorism, nuclear weapons, energy security, climate change, technology and development. 

You practice your ability to think critically about how you make sense of contemporary global security politics, as well as how we might think and practice security differently, exploring both the possibilities for change and the limits of security.

30 credits

Global Health and Global Politics

Situated within contemporary approaches to International Relations and International Political Economy, this module will introduce you to the global politics of health, addressing health as both a global issue, and also as a quintessentially political one.

During this module, you will chart the recent rise of health as an issue of 'high politics', examine the relationship between individual and population health and the global political economy, explore the ways in which institutions by which health is governed at the global level, and analyse some of the key contemporary issues and challenges in contemporary global health governance. In doing so, we will be applying a variety of different 'lenses' (including feminist, decolonial and human rights-based approaches) to understand how these might affect what are seen as global health priorities - and what should be done about them.

Through the seminars and assessments, students on the module will further develop a variety of different skills including the analysis of issues from different perspectives, writing for policy and other non-academic audiences, presentation skills, and working as part of a team.

30 credits

Policy-Making in the Real World

Policy making is an increasingly complex process, involving a range of 'wicked problems' and a growing set of options for addressing them. Given the multiple risks and crises they must deal with, how can policy makers come up with effective policy, learn from mistakes and deal with unexpected events? What tools can they employ to do so and how can we evaluate their success or failure?

You will take a theoretically informed but practice-focused approach to these questions. You will consider topics such as how technological innovation will inform policy making, looking at the impact of big data and AI, and considering the standards that should apply to such tools.  

Throughout the module, you will practice a range of practical skills through innovative group projects and visiting speakers from the policy world.

30 credits

Development and the State

You will explore and critically assess the political economy of development by focusing on the interplay between processes of economic transformation and the political strategies pursued by states in the name of national development. This is an interdisciplinary module, asking you to draw on development studies, the political economy of growth and transformation, and comparative capitalisms.

To begin, you will review the most salient theoretical themes in approaches to capitalist development. This will put you in a position to understand more specific theorisations of capitalist development as a state strategy in a world characterised by uneven and combined capitalist development. You will then shift your focus more specifically to the state, bringing the more generic issues reviewed at the start of the module into a focused 'developmental' framing. 

By the end of the module, you will be able to undertake ambitious evaluative work in which normative questions are asked and the prospects for capitalist development are considered.

30 credits

Political Economy of Global Environmental change

Global environmental politics grapples with the key issues that shape the survival of life on Earth in the future.  Climate collapse, biodiversity loss, pandemics and pollution are just some of the problems that shape our everyday lives. Tackling them is an increasingly urgent agenda for international organisations, governments, NGOs and the wider public. To understand the origins of, the drivers of and the possible solutions to environmental degradation we need to examine them not just as matters of science, but also as wide ranging social, political, economic and cultural issues. 

In this course, you will be introduced to the major debates in the political economy of the environment. 

You will examine central debates around climate change, the Anthropocene, planetary boundaries, biodiversity loss, population, environment-conflict dynamics and human-animal relations. You will also discuss the potentials and pitfalls of different 'green' solutions such as degrowth, renewables, geoengineering, Nature Based Solutions, protected areas and green economy. You will explore these debates by analysing the different approaches to tackling global environmental change and use case studies to illuminate wider conceptual debates.

30 credits

Democratic Governance in the 21st Century: Problems, Innovations and Solutions

Political systems around the world drive to be democratic, but what is meant by democracy and how can this be achieved?

During this module, you will consider the nature of the democratic crisis faced by countries around the world and map the latest innovations designed to address this challenge. You will study the tensions between new and old democratic arenas and consider the indicators of a thriving democracy.

Your work will be grounded in the tradition of engaged scholarship, will use real world examples and will culminate in a solution focused analysis. By the end, you will have developed keen professional and research skills by studying the theory and practice of democratic innovation.

30 credits

Wellbeing in Politics and Policy

There has been a dramatic rise in political interest in wellbeing over the past decade. Politicians and policy-makers in a range of contexts - national and international - have moved towards embracing wellbeing as a more comprehensive, inclusive and appropriate goal of public policy than the traditionally narrow focus on indicators of economic prosperity. This has led to the development of wellbeing frameworks that embrace indicators of subjective wellbeing (e.g., happiness), environmental and social concerns alongside economic indicators. For some these developments have the potential to transform aspects of politics and policy in the long term. This module explores conceptual, empirical and policy-related aspects of wellbeing. It examines competing definitions, understandings and measurements of wellbeing and related concepts such as quality of life and happiness. It aims to give students a clear understanding of how and why wellbeing has risen up political agendas, the significance of developments in policy to date and the potential for wellbeing as a political idea and guide to policy.

30 credits

Terrorism and Political Violence

This module aims to provide an advanced level of understanding with reference to the topics of terrorism and political violence. It is organised around a framework of analysing both 'Terrorism' and political violence more broadly, both as events in the world, and as essentially political phenomena, whose effects have, in large part, to do with how they are politically defined and responded to.  

One way of thinking about this module is that it takes a critical theory approach to terrorism and political violence. Instead of a traditional, or 'problem solving' approach, which takes 'Terrorism' as a pre-defined problem in the world and our goal to develop solutions to it, this class begins by critically interrogating the way that 'terrorism' has been constructed as a way of understanding some types of political violence and not others. This critical approach then runs throughout the module and shapes our approach to the causes of terrorism and the forms of counterterrorism. Combining and applying Sociological and International Relations approaches, you will conduct a critical analysis on security and violence using a variety of cases ranging from 'macro-level' (war, including guerrilla warfare/insurgency, genocide and terrorism) through to 'micro-level' sites usually considered 'private' or 'intimate' ('domestic' violence, white supremacist bombings of historical Black churches, etc.). Moving beyond a narrow understanding of terrorism as limited to sub-state violence, you will also study the state as a perpetrator of political violence, both at home and abroad, and the role of gender, sexuality, and race in producing images of the terrorist. 

By the end of this module, you will therefore not only have dicussed critical understandings of terrorism, but also explored the ways in which it has effects in the world, which are often by shaping the ways that states and other actors respond to it as a threat, more so than through specific violent acts themselves.

30 credits

Capitalism and Crisis

During this module, you will explore the relationship between capitalism and crisis through the prism of the causes of, and fallout from, the 2008 crash.

You will unpack the core concepts of the module - capitalism and crisis - and gain a brief historical overview of pre-2008 economic crises to contextualise and compare the main content of the module. You shall then go on to survey competing explanations of the 2008 crisis, by starting narrow (i.e. regulation of banking) and then broadening out (i.e. evolution of capitalism).

By the end of the module, you will have examined the economic and political fallout of  the 2008 crisis, be able to debate the extent to which the crisis was truly global, and discuss the variety of political responses to the crash.

30 credits

Wellbeing in Politics and Policy

There has been a dramatic rise in political interest in wellbeing over the past decade. Politicians and policy-makers in a range of contexts - national and international - have moved towards embracing wellbeing as a more comprehensive, inclusive and appropriate goal of public policy than the traditionally narrow focus on indicators of economic prosperity. This has led to the development of wellbeing frameworks that embrace indicators of subjective wellbeing (e.g., happiness), environmental and social concerns alongside economic indicators. For some these developments have the potential to transform aspects of politics and policy in the long term. This module explores conceptual, empirical and policy-related aspects of wellbeing. It examines competing definitions, understandings and measurements of wellbeing and related concepts such as quality of life and happiness. It aims to give students a clear understanding of how and why wellbeing has risen up political agendas, the significance of developments in policy to date and the potential for wellbeing as a political idea and guide to policy.

30 credits

Freedom

Freedom is one of the most important political values, if not the most important one of all. During this module, you will investigate the political value of freedom by engaging with the literature in contemporary political theory.

To do so, you will focus on: competing theories of freedom (negative, positive, republican); the relationship between freedom and other values (autonomy, equality, security); and a number of applied issues (the harm principle, freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of movement). 

Taking a theoretical and philosophical approach, this module will encourage you to use the tools needed to analyse and evaluate political arguments which invoke the value of freedom.

30 credits

The Governance and Politics of the European Union

During this module, you will examine the history and development of the European Union, together with the institutions and decision-making processes of the community.

You will also investigate various theoretical perspectives on the process of bringing European countries closer together through economic, political, and social cooperation - a process known as European integration. When evaluating this process, you will focus on selected policy sectors, ranging from the single market and monetary union to budget and cohesion policy and foreign, security and defence policy.

This module will help you develop a range of skills. These include, but are not limited to, the skills to discover, understand and create academic work, engage in small group discussions in seminars, coherently analyse the ideas of others and critically engage with those ideas, and engage with key regional and global issues and contexts.

30 credits