Hello!
I have a question. I have a degree in French from Edinburgh Uni but now I want to do a Masters in International Relations. My degree put a lot of emphasis on culture (as opposed to translation or linguistics, etc) so I have studied some politics before, but not much. I know some places will admit students to Masters courses even if their undergraduate degrees aren't directly related, does anyone know of any good International Relations (or similar) courses where this is the case? Thanks!

Hello!

I moved from a language/culture BA (Serbo-Croatian at UCL) to an International Relations MA at Manchester. The staff are excellent (one won the Political Studies Association Lecturer of the Year just after I left), the department is very friendly and rigorously academic, and offers a few different "threads" of International Relations - you can specialise in International Political Economy, Development Studies, Human Rights, Foreign Policy (esp US) of International Relations theory. I did IR theory as I really wanted to get into the subject. A number of students will have IR backgrounds from undergrad but when I was there around half came from other-but-related disciplines (European Studies, general Politics, Philosophy, languages).

The first few weeks were tough, getting your head around a new way of thinking, but I managed to get a distinction so it is not a complete negative to come from a different background.

Usually the most respected/established IR courses are seen to be (amongst others) at: Manchester, Aberystwyth, LSE, Sheffield and Leeds (although Leeds often takes a more 'security' approach). Kings is best for War Studies, St Andrews for Terrorism (although Aber are also good), Sussex for more EU.

Oh, and although I am not a student there any more, I run a multidisciplinary postgraduate journal at the Uni of Manchester on "Europe" (Broadly defined). If you want to look at Europe but not the EU, there are a lot of innovations and postgrad initiatives at Manchester to really get you involved.

Thank you so much, that's so helpful! I'm still not entirely sure what area I want to specialize in, so I'll have a look at all of those. Could you recommend any books I could read in the meantime to get me started?

Hi again!

The standard Masters text in IR in Burchill Smith and Devetak (eds) Theories of International Relations; but as you might guess its for IR theory. If you want a more introductory book you can't go wrong with the text I insist my IR undergrads use which is Baylis and Smith "the Globalization of World Politics: and Introduction to International Relations". Its on the 4th edition now, but the earlier ones are almost as good. This covers 'issues' (security, development, human rights, trade/globalisation) as well as an intro to the real theory - plus it has great guides to further reading!

Good luck!

When I did my MA in IR - I alos had no background
but I found that Jackson & Sorenson - Theories of IR was a great intro
It is actually an undergrad text

then Bayliss et al was fantastic - very easy to read with good further reading.

Burchill et al is a slightly more complex but great if youve read Jackson Sorenson & Bayliss first
They cover Critical Theory better than anyone

Best of Luck