Politics

Our MRes Politics will develop your understanding of research methodologies and techniques in politics to an advanced level, enabling you to undertake your own independent research. It provides an intellectually stimulating guide to politics research and will develop your awareness of the essential requirements of in-depth research, including theory, design and methods. The flexible choice of option modules and dissertation topics on this course allows you to consider a range of subjects in the field of politics, or to develop a research specialism in areas such as public policy and management, government policy and politics, or social and political theory.

Highlights

Birkbeck is a world-renowned centre of original, influential research in politics. We organise a lively programme of seminars and conferences and are home to affiliated research centres, such as the Birkbeck Centre for British Political Life, which run seminars, conferences and other events where some of the world's best scholars present their latest research.

Our academic staff are international authorities in their respective fields, publishing and delivering stimulating teaching in a wide range of political topics including civil society and the state, public policy, development, gender, international security and terrorism, and social and political theory, among others.

Our location in central London puts us at the heart of the UK’s political life and at the centre of academic London. You can walk down to Parliament and Whitehall, while Bloomsbury contains some of the world’s most famous libraries and centres of research. Our departmental building was once a key location for members of the Bloomsbury Group, so you could be studying in rooms that have hosted distinguished visitors, including T.S. Eliot, George Bernard Shaw and Maynard Keynes.

You can take advantage of the rich research collections nearby, including Senate House Library, which is right next door to Birkbeck, the British Library, which is five minutes’ walk away, and the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics, which is walkable from Birkbeck.

Birkbeck's MRes degrees are recognised by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for the award of 1+3 studentships. These studentships are designed to fund students for a four-year full-time (or six-/seven-year part-time) programme of postgraduate study combining a taught Master's degree and a PhD.

Careers and employability

MRes graduates can pursue career paths in government or advisory bodies where research skills are required, as well as policy research, higher education, the voluntary sector and journalism.