The Local and the Global: IR in Practice (L2066)

15 credits, Level 4

Spring teaching

In this module you will conduct your own research project on the relationship between the local and the global.

There are four project topics to choose from:

• the Royal Pavilion as a WWI Indian Army hospital
• refugee settlement in Brighton
• the EDO arms factory in Brighton
• decolonizing the curriculum.

The goal of the module is to connect the study of International Relations to your everyday life and your experience as a student in Brighton/at Sussex. You will learn how to:  

• move from a topic to a research question
• design a research project
• conduct research
• write a portfolio that demonstrates your learning.

Along the way, you will learn about issues of research design, the role of theory in research, methods and methodology, bias objectivity and neutrality, and research ethics – as well as learning a lot about your chosen topic.

You will have the opportunity to work in a study group with your peers; the assessment for the module is a 2000 word individual portfolio.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 22 hours of contact time and about 128 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2023/24. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to COVID-19, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum. We’ll make sure to let our applicants know of material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.

Courses

This module is offered on the following courses:

• International Relations BA
• International Relations with a Language BA