Masters

Masters study at Aberystwyth is an intellectually stimulating experience which takes students to a higher level of academic endeavour.

Aberystwyth has a longstanding reputation for IR scholarship in two areas: war, strategy and intelligence and critical approaches to international relations. Our Masters degrees reflect those two traditions yet also nurture the cross-fertilization of ideas between them.

We teach in two formats: two-hour seminars and dissertation study.

Our staff link their research and teaching, so students enter an intellectual dialogue with staff, exploring ideas and pushing new thinking onwards. As a result, the seminar sessions are intense and fulfilling.
The dissertation research allows our Masters students to pursue a passion project of their own. Guided by staff, they develop a research topic, discover sources, read, think and write to become experts in their own field.

What makes Aberystwyth special is our vibrant research culture, which spans everyone from fresher to professor. As a Masters student you will attend our departmental seminar series and research group activities where conversations about ideas and events spill over into chats in pubs and cafes. This community of research can often prompt the most exciting thinking.

Our Masters degrees are:

Why Aberystwyth?

In recent years, scholars from all over the world have been attracted to the atmosphere of open thinking that accompanies the wide horizons of Wales’s west coast: from Bolivia to Lithuania, from the USA to India. Our position brings a great advantage: the perspective to see how powerfulness works and the space to think IR differently. Coupled with this is our renowned research community where Masters students are integrated within our wider intellectual circles of regular seminars, research groups and networks of scholarship that reach across the globe. What really makes this work is the Department’s informal and friendly intellectual atmosphere, born of Aberystwyth’s close and supportive community.