Program Overview
The Joint Honours Programme in History and International Relations provides students with an intellectual training in disciplines that are complementary and mutually enriching. The programme enables students to appreciate how historical events shape modern politics and how such themes are to be understood and explained through insights into political analysis (eg political theory, political institutions, international relations). It offers students the opportunity to analyse country-based developments across the globe and pays specific attention to the histories and politics of Africa, Europe and the America.
History and International Relations Degree highlights
History at Queen’s is ranked in the top 200 as per the QS World University Rankings 2021.
Global Opportunities
This programme offers students opportunities to travel and study at universities in Europe and North America. Short-term (two weeks) and longer-term (up to one academic year) exchanges are on offer.
Possible examples include:
• George Washington University (Washington DC, USA)
• Aarhus Universitet (Denmark)
• College of Charleston (South Carolina, USA)
• Institut d’Etudes Politques de Bordeaux (France)
• University of Oslo (Norway)
• Universiteit Utrecht (Netherlands)
• Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee, USA)
Field trips may also be offered in particular years or as part of certain modules.
The School also has links with Queen’s University’s Global Research Centre, The Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. Many of the School’s staff are Fellows in the Mitchell Institute, where they work in collaboration with experts in peace and conflict studies from other disciplines such as law, sociology, and the creative arts.
Industry Links
The School offers a range of employment placements where students can gain real world work experience which is invaluable in terms of employment after graduation. Given that Belfast is a regional capital with devolved powers, we can offer students placements in the high profile political and related institutions on our doorstep - for example in the Department of Justice, Equality Commission, Police Ombudsman’s Office, or BBC Northern Ireland.
The internship scheme at Queen's University involves work placements with a range of government agencies and political parties at Stormont, as well as the Police Ombudsman, the BBC and local non-governmental agencies and consultancies. Students spend three days a week seconded to an organization, providing them with vital work experience and exposure to the world of policy-making.
Career Development
Understanding the present and anticipating the future requires the ability to study and interpret the past as a means to understanding the present. This programme enables students to appreciate how historical events shape modern issues and how such themes are to be understood and explained through insights into political analysis (e.g. political theory, political institutions, international relations).
Internationally Renowned Experts
With over 30 staff at the cutting edge of research and publication, the Politics and IR at Queen’s is the largest in Ireland and one of the largest in the UK and Ireland, with specialisms in Irish and British politics, political theory, sustainable development, the politics of film and literature, gender, democratic innovations, European Union politics, ethnic conflict, and international relations.
Professor David Phinnemore is an expert on EU Treaty reform and EU enlargement, which led to his secondment as an advisor to the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Dr Alex Titov publishes widely, both academically and in popular media, on various aspects of Russian history, politics and foreign policy. One of his research fields has been Russian foreign policy since the collapse of the USSR. His work has appeared in the Irish Times, The Independent (London), The Conversation, BBC History Magazine, and many others.
We offer a wide-ranging history curriculum, that attends to historical phenomena like racism traditionally neglected by British and Irish universities.
The School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen‘s has 30 full-time academics, making it the largest institutional centre for the study of these subjects in Ireland and one of the largest in the UK.
The School also boasts the following:
• Centre for Public History
• Institute of Cognition and Culture
• Institute of Irish Studies
• Two International Summer Schools (the Irish
Studies Summer School; and the Conflict
Transformation and Social Justice Summer
School)
Student Experience
Our uniquely supportive pastoral care/ personal tutor system is equalled only by the academic guidance available.
https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/happ/student-experience/undergraduate-opportunities/
Our vibrant Politics Society (Polysoc) and History provides a welcome and stimulating environment for new students.
https://www.facebook.com/qub.polysoc
Year after year, our history students tell the NSS that they are more than 90% satisfied by their teaching.
Students play an active role in making their own curriculum and our historians teach in small groups even at Level 1.
“When I came to visit Queen‘s, the facilities, the city and the feel of the place were far above any of the other universities I‘d visited. I chose this particular course as it looked interesting, and covered a variety of topics. Belfast itself is a lovely city, with an amazing river walk. I‘ve loved trips to the coast and to the mountains and it really is a beautiful place to live.”
Naomi Armstrong
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