Politics is concerned with central issues that have shaped the modern world, such as war and peace, poverty and inequality, order and justice, governance and power, anarchy and security, and identity and sovereignty. Our pathway is predicated on a long-term commitment to a theoretically, methodologically and empirically pluralistic approach to political science from the domestic to the global. Across the two participating institutions at Manchester and Lancaster this commitment is reflected in research route masters programmes in all the main sub-fields of the discipline, including political theory, public policy and governance, democracy and elections, comparative politics, area studies, European politics and policy, international relations, international security, international political economy, human rights and peace studies. While keeping to this ecumenical approach, we aim to further the ESRC’s priorities by capitalising on areas of genuine excellence and interdisciplinary collaboration with cognate disciplines. Major recent projects centring on the Politics pathway include the ESRC funded British Election Study (BES), Security Lancaster, and European Research Council-funded programmes on ‘Understanding Institutional Change: A Gender Perspective,’ ‘Digital Campaigning and Electoral Democracy’ and ‘Comparative Authoritarian Protest

Programmes eligible for NWSSDTP funding

N.B. Master’s programmes can only be funded as part of a 1+3/2+2 Studentship

Lancaster University

• MA Diplomacy and Foreign Policy
• MA Diplomacy and Religion
• MA International Relations
• MA Politics
• MA Politics and Philosophy
• MRes International Relations
• MSc Politics, Philosophy and Management
• PhD International Relations

University of Manchester

• MA European Politics and Policy (Research Route)
• MA Governance and Public Policy (Research Route)
• MA Political Theory (Research Route)
• MA Democracy and Elections (Research Route)
• MA International Relations (Research Route)
• MA International Political Economy (Research Route)
• MA Human Rights with Law (Research Route)
• MA Human Rights and Political Science (Research Route)
• MA Political Economy (Research Route)
• PhD Politics

For information on how to apply for funding, please visit our How to Apply page.

Pathway Representatives

Contact details for Politics Pathway Representatives at each institution can be found here

Current Politics NWSSDTP students

Matthew Wray Perry (2018 Cohort)

• University of Manchester
• Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-perry95/
• Email Address: matthew.perry@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
• MethodsX Stream: Interview-based Qualitative Research

What is the point of dignity? A re-characterisation of dignity as the basis of (human) rights status

My research, situated in Political Theory, seeks to explain the possession of rights through interrogating the idea often established at their foundation: dignity. The ambiguity of this notion will be cleared by, among other things, attending to: the status of and human differentiation from non-human animals, the problem of equalising status and what the recognition of dignity amounts to.

Jude Rowley (2020 Cohort)

• Lancaster University
• Website: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/ppr/people/jude-rowley
• Email Address: j.d.rowley@lancaster.ac.uk

From Order to Complexity: Exploring the Relationship Between History, Science, and International Relations

This project focusses on International Relations and the discipline’s relationship with historical narratives and ‘scientific’ discourses. It seeks to identify the long shadows of colonial visions of world order in orthodox approaches to modern IR and to explore whether new and radically different approaches coupled with introspection into the discipline’s past can move IR towards a more diverse future.

Politics NWSSDTP Alumni

Pending