The Department of Politics and International Relations is offering nine Graduate Teaching Assistantships for PhD students. We particularly welcome applications from those studying in the fields of:


Political Theory


Intelligence and Security Studies


Ethics and Public Policy


Strategic Studies


Human Rights and Global Ethics

Deadlines for Applications:  the studentships will remain open until filled for registration in the 2012-13 academic year, but a first round of reviews of applications will be made the week commencing 21st May 2012, and prospective applicants are strongly encouraged to submit their applications by midnight 20th May.

The Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester is committed to achieving excellence in research and to providing relevant and well-taught postgraduate programmes for its students.

We have a lively postgraduate community, including about 20 research students as well as 40 campus-based masters students, and 180 masters students studying by distance learning.

Members of the department have a wide range of theoretical and substantive interests and we are able to offer supervision on numerous topics including international relations, security studies, diplomacy, political theory, feminism, democratisation and regional studies. We are committed to research approaches that explore the relationships between political theory, empirical enquiry and policy interventions across a broadly defined range of political topics.

We are pleased to announce that we now offer a PhD via distance learning

Academic Staff and their Research Areas

Please see individual staff pages for further information:

• Dr Laura Brace: The idea of property from the seventeenth century to the present and its connection with freedom, gender, race, colonialism and self-ownership.
• Dr Philip Cook: political theory; theories of distributive justice; children, families, and social justice; free speech and censorship/self-censorship; contractualism in moral and political theory.
• Dr Oliver Daddow: British foreign policy; International Relations theory; Euroscepticism; British politics from New Labour to the Coalition government.
• Dr Andrew Futter: Nuclear weapons policy, nuclear deterrence and nuclear non-proliferation issues; projects relating to contemporary US foreign and security policy; and projects in strategic studies or diplomatic history.
• Professor Robert Garner: Environmental politics and the politics (and philosophy) of animal rights.
• Mr James Hamill: Southern Africa, especially South Africa’s post-1990 transition, but also post independence politics in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
• Ms Karen Henderson: The politics of East Central Europe, especially the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and EU eastward enlargement.
• Mr Stephen Hopkins: Northern Ireland, French and Italian trade unions, and Italian politics
• Dr Gabriella Lazaridis: Ethnicity, Migration, Race and Racisms, Belonging and Identity/ies, Processes of Inclusion-Exclusion, Gender inequalities, Implementation of EU policies in Southern Europe.
• Dr Philip Lynch: The Conservative party, British politics and European integration, UK territorial politics.
• Dr Tara McCormack: security (theory and practices), sovereignty, agency, and intervention after the Cold War.
• Dr Laura Morales; political behaviour, political parties in western democracies, governmental responsiveness to public opinion, the politics of immigration in western democracies, women and politics.
• Dr Jon Moran: security studies; the continuing power of the state in the international system and specifically in the role of the state and military and intelligence agencies both domestically and internationally.
• Professor Mark Phythian: Intelligence and Security.
• Dr Kelly Staples: Citizenship, Human Rights, International Political Theory, refugees, stateless persons.
• Dr Alex Waddan: American domestic and foreign policy and politics, particularly US welfare and health care reform.
• Dr Richard Whitaker: The European Parliament; political parties on the centre-right; legislative politics, especially committee systems in legislatures; European Union institutions.

Supervision and Research Training

We welcome applications from suitably qualified home and international students for research leading to PhD.

Supervision can be provided on either a full or part-time basis. Students are nominated either one or two supervisors whom they meet regularly. Supervisors are responsible for helping students in developing a structured programme of work and for reading and commenting on work in progress at regular intervals.

As part of a flexible training programme, research students can take a departmental training course which covers the philosophy of social science, normative analysis and qualitative analysis, and is complemented by the provision of teaching in quantitative methods (including computer analysis). Subject-specific training allows you to choose between competing approaches to political research and to engage critically with the research process. Taught courses are complemented by your supervision programme, specifically tailored to his or her requirements.

Contact

If you are interested in applying for a PhD with us, please contact Philip Cook with a research proposal. Guidelines for producing a proposal are available here: PhD Guidance

Dr Philip Cook
Department of Politics and International Relations
University of Leicester
University Road
Leicester LE1 7RH
Email: pac20@le.ac.uk