History and International Relations BA (Hons)

Compulsory

• SC1601 - Fundamentals of the Social Sciences

  This module will introduce you to key concepts, theories, thinkers and approaches in the social and political sciences and history. You will also learn the techniques used by a range of disciplines within the social and political sciences and history for gaining and validating knowledge of the social and political world.

• SC1604 - Special Subjects A

  In this module, you get to dive deep into your own area of study and experience the full range of subjects taught by Brunel Social and Political Sciences. As part of the module, you’ll take three classes – at least one from your degree subject, with the others chosen from across the department. Classes cover a huge range of topics, from media production to African history, crime investigation to the climate crisis – so you can gain new skills, explore pressing problems, and follow where your curiosity leads you. 

• SC1603 - Contemporary Challenges

  This module provides hands-on experience of how social and political science operates outside the university, focusing on Contemporary Challenges. Over ten weeks, you will work in small groups on applied research addressing real-world social, political, and institutional problems. The emphasis is on learning by doing, supported by mentoring, methods training, professional exposure, and structured reflection on skills development.

• SC1605 - Special Subjects B

  In this module, you get to dive deep into your own area of study and experience the full range of subjects taught by Brunel Social and Political Sciences. As part of the module, you’ll take three classes - at least one from your degree subject, with the others chosen from across the department. Classes cover a huge range of topics, from media production to African history, crime investigation to the climate crisis - so you can gain new skills, explore pressing problems, and follow where your curiosity leads you. 

Compulsory

• PX2613 - Historians and their Craft

  This module prepares students for the Dissertation by introducing them to some methodological and theoretical issues that historians encounter in the practice of history. Students are introduced to ways in which historians have engaged with other disciplines. They reflect upon public history and why history matters in today’s society by tracing developments in historical method and examining different approaches to history.

• PP2638 - Theories of International Relations

  This module introduces students to major theoretical approaches in the study of International Relations. These theories are employed to examine and understand contemporary actors in world politics such as states, international organisations, non-governmental actors as well as major issues and problems such as war, terrorism, climate change or nuclear proliferation. The aim is to give students a critical understanding of IR theory

Optional

• PP2636 - Climate Politics
  This module aims to enable students to attain a comprehensive understanding of key concepts and theories in the politics and political economy of climate change. It will provide students with resources to assist them in making informed judgments on a range of questions and debates.
• PX2615 - Colonialism and Decolonization in Africa

  Africa is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented regions of the modern world. More often than not, its history is presented as a long series of human disasters, conflict, and disorder. However, Africa’s modern history is also one of resistance, and dynamic and creative responses to changing circumstances. This module examines Africa’s multifaceted history since about 1800.

• SO2610 - Colonialism, Migration and Global Racism

  This module explores the concept, meaning and practices of ‘race’, ethnicity, racialization, and global racisms. It identifies how ‘race’ and racism have evolved over time, and in different contexts - both nationally in the contemporary UK as well as in other parts of the world. 

• PX2621 - Fascist Italy, 1919-1945: Revolution, Conflict and Collapse

  This module explores the rise and fall of Fascist Italy through political, socio-cultural, economic and military perspectives, among others.

• SO2609 - Gender, Sexuality and Feminism

  This module will introduce students to core ideas in feminism via the key concepts of gender and sexuality. It will develop students’ understandings of social structures, human cultures, and economic inequalities and political relationships. The course will offer theoretical tools and historical insights into gendered, feminised, and sexualised socio-cultural worlds.

• PX2620 - Insurgency and Counter-insurgency

  This module examines the concept and development of insurgency and counter-insurgency from the classical period to the present, with an emphasis on the post-1789 period, especially the post-1945 wars of decolonisation. The module will conclude with the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ and current examples of insurgency and counter-insurgency. 

• SA2624 - Middle East: Societies, Religion and Politics

  This module examines a particular ethnographic region, assessing in the first instance whether these regions can usefully be considered cultural areas, and going on to examine the key issues for the different parts of each region. The module covers topics such as religion, gender, economics, and local politics in the area of study. 

• PP2628 - National Security Intelligence
  Students will receive an introduction and overview to the field of national security intelligence and examine in greater detail intelligence collection, analysis, counterintelligence, covert action, and other selected topics.
• SA2625 - South Asia: Cultures, Societies and Development

  This module examines the region of South Asia, assessing whether the geographical region can usefully be considered as a cultural area, and going on to examine the key issues for the different parts of the region. The module covers topics including colonial histories, caste and class, gender, kinship, globalisation, and South Asian diasporas. It draws, in particular, on the disciplines of anthropology and history and on the field of development studies.

• PP2629 - The State and Revolution

  This module provides students with an understanding of the historical emergence of two of the central concepts of modern political thought: the state and revolution, or the constitution of political order and the process of fundamental political transformation. We study the development of these concepts in some of the major events of political modernity, from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

• PX2xxB - Struggles for Emancipation
  • To examine the tactics and strategies that have been employed by oppressed groups and minorities to secure civil rights, focusing on a specific group or groups as examplars
  • To examine the campaigning strategies and networks developed by activists.
  • To scrutinise the ideas and goals of a movement for emancipation through analysis of primary source documents.
  • To give students understanding of the nature of opposition to the granting of civil rights, and the extent to which it was overcome
  • To give students awareness of the continuing issues left to be resolved after successes in the struggle were achieved
  • To acquire a sound understanding of the historiography on this topic.
  • To develop reading, writing, and analytical skills.

Compulsory

• SC3601 - Dissertation

  To develop students’ abilities to plan, design and execute a research project in the subject area of their degree programme, to communicate their ideas and critically evaluate the success of their project. 

• SC3602 - Advanced Research Skills for Social and Political Sciences

  This module introduces you to the research and writing process for your dissertation or Major Final Project, helping you build the reading, writing and analytical skills you’ll rely on throughout. It also guides you through the techniques for designing and carrying out a research project in your discipline, encouraging you to engage critically with the topic you choose.

Optional

• SO3614 - Apocalypse! Crisis and Society

  Explore the social & political significance of representations of national and global crises, and public perceptions of controversies. Students analyse dystopian popular and scientific discourses that dwell on disorder and catastrophe. Indicative content includes risk, uncertainty, globalisation, the environment, disease, capitalism. Public understanding, perception and engagement with popular and scientific controversies and notions of crisis.

• PX3626 - The Arab-Israeli Conflict

  We survey the Arab-Israeli conflict, covering three overarching themes: 1) Origins of the Conflict; 2) Evolution of the Conflict; and 3) Peace and its Limits. The module covers the origins of both national movements, the development of the conflict under British rule, the major Arab-Israeli wars, peace agreements, and it ends with recent events. 

• CO3617 - Digital Media, Social Movements and Change

  This module gives you an in‑depth, critical understanding of how social movements emerge, succeed or fail to create social or political change, using real‑world cases to explore media tools, leadership, collective identity and governmental or international responses. You’ll build strategic thinking by analysing how historical and contemporary movements organise, mobilise and coordinate in the digital age.

• SA3614 - Environment and Sustainability
• PP3629 - European Union Politics: Problems and Prospects
  In this module students will discuss the development and functioning of the EU from its inception to the present day and be introduced to and learn to evaluate a range of theoretical perspectives on the EU’s creation, development and functioning. Students will examine a range of political problems in the European integration process, such as legitimacy, domestic and social impact, institutional and policy reform, enlargement, and future directions.
• PP3xxA - Great Power Competition: Russia, China and the USA

  Students will be able to:

  • Relate the great power competition today to historical precedents.
  • Understand the motivations behind Chinese, Russian, and U.S. national security policies.
  • Define the tools that great powers use to further their interests in the world.
  • Compare the ways smaller states influence great powers in the international sphere.
  • Interpret the security risks involved with great powers competing in the political, economic, and military spheres.
• SO3617 - Lawyers, Guns and Money: Making the Modern World System

  This module will explore issues raised by historical and political sociology regarding the development of the modern world-system. In particular the course will focus upon the rise to dominance of Europe in the building of the modern world-system and the explanations offered for this.

• SC3600 - Making the Social

  An introduction to core concepts in social theory. The emphasis is on concepts through which students can relate to the worlds they inhabit and the lives they live, connecting these to a broad canvas: the diversity of social existence and the sweep of human history. The focus is on basic building blocks of social existence.

• PP3631 - Marx and the Critique of Political Economy
  This module will introduce you to the work of Marx and his collaborator Engels and assist in developing a critical understanding of Marx’s major work Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. You will engage with primary sources in political thought.
• PP3640 - Political Economy of the Changing World Order

  The module introduces students to political economy, in particular international political economy (IPE), and to geopolitics. It explores the evolution of world orders, with a focus on the current period. It examines relationships between economic forces and state strategies (economic and geopolitical) on the international stage. It will familiarise students with key concepts and topics in IPE.

• PX3XXA - Primary Source Workshop

  This aim of this module is to develop students’ skills in formulating findings on a selected historical topic or topics, using primary source materials. It introduces students to the skills of testing historical interpretations using primary materials and develops their understanding of the nature of these sources, issues concerning their provenance and survival and the ways in which they can be used to construct historical accounts.

• PX3616 - The Second World War
  This module explores the military, political and socio-economic events and developments of the Second World War. Students will focus on the historiography and cultural significance of the war up to the present day and will adopt an “international history” approach by building its analysis around the interaction of states and peoples in this global conflict.
• PX3615 - Slavery and Abolition in the Atlantic World
  • Examine the evolution and expansion to the transatlantic slave trade
  • Explore the motives and factors which led to the development and expansion of slavery in the Atlantic World c. 17 and 18th centuries
  • Analyse the main features and characteristics of slave society in the British West Indies
  • Investigate the origins of abolitionism in Britain
  • Explore the factors which led to successful abolition of both the slave trade and slavery, in Britain and elsewhere in the nineteenth century
  • Familiarise students with the historiography on slavery, the slave trade and abolition in the Atlantic world
  • Introduce students to range of sources on the slave trade and slavery
• Terrorism and Counterterrorism
  This module aims to address a series of empirical questions regarding the causes, conduct, and consequences of campaigns of terrorism in the modern world. This module aims at providing students with an understanding of a series of key debates in the social science literature.
• PX3619 - Violence and Conflict in Eastern Africa
  In this module students will explore the role of violence and conflict in the course of eastern Africa’s modern history. Students will gain an in depth understanding of the ways in which violence and conflict have influenced economy, society and polity in the modern era, through a consideration of broad themes, such as age, ethnicity, and resources, as well as specific case studies taken from across the region.