Understanding World Politics: A Critical Overview of Core Issues and Theories
This course introduces students to key International Relations (IR) theories, concepts and discussions. It examines the complex and difficult problems the world faces today and the different ways of defining, understanding, and responding to these problems. Understanding the causes of the world’s complex problems is no easy task and no single analytical lens can capture any issue accurately.
IR provides various explanations and solutions to these problems, rendering it a highly pluralistic and holistic discipline that produces knowledge of not one country or continent or issue, but knowledge to capture political, ideational, social and economic global processes that connect the world at a global level. Studying IR is a challenging but also a rewarding endeavour because it teaches us to look at the human experience in a holistic way and on a global scale.
Course Objectives
This course is an introductory course and aims to provide students with the main conceptual, analytical and theoretical tools to explain world politics.
By the end of the course, students will be able to identify different ways of understanding world politics and will also be able to produce well-informed analyses of contemporary world issues.
Intended Audience
This course is aimed at anyone with an interest in international politics, those who wish to develop a better understanding of the world today, and anyone seeking a stronger background for degrees or careers requiring a grasp of contemporary world politics.
It would suit those both inside and outside the Social Sciences by broadening their conceptual understanding of world politics and providing them with new analytical tools.
Previous Knowledge
No prior knowledge of either International Relations or International Politics is assumed or required for this course.
Transferable Knowledge and Skills
This course will develop critical analysis, an understanding of world affairs and the ability to capture this understanding and analysis both on paper and verbally.
Dr Zeynep Kaya
Dr Zeynep Kaya is Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sheffield since 2020 and previously worked as Research Fellow at the LSE. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the LSE. She is co-editor of I.B. Tauris-Bloomsbury’s book series on Kurdish studies and co-convenor of Kurdish Studies Series with the LSE Middle East Centre. She is also an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.
Zeynep’s main research areas involve borderlands, territoriality, conflict, peace, political legitimacy and gender, and has a monograph entitled Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism with Cambridge University Press and has published several peer-reviewed articles with journals such as Conflict, Security & Development, Middle East Policy, Democratisation and Ethnopolitics.