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The International Relations Concentration

is a rigorous program that combines student choice with cross-disciplinary training in international and comparative perspective.  The IR program emphasizes: a solid grounding in the methods of analysis used in the social sciences and humanities to help students think critically about international phenomena, the exploration of the empirical and the normative domains of the subject, and flexibility to allow students to customize their IR concentration.

Our academic mission is to foster creative thinking about complex global problems and to equip students with the analytic tools, language expertise, and cross-cultural understanding to guide them in that process. The concentration draws on over 25 departments and programs including political science, history, economics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, religious studies, environmental studies, as well as area studies, and requires advanced competency in at least two languages.

The IR concentration is organized around a multidisciplinary core that provides students with solid grounding in five different ways of the thinking about the world, and the following two sub-themes that combine macro and micro ethnographic perspectives and methods into the study of international relations:

  • security and society
  • political economy and society

The concentration has a capstone seminar requirement that integrates research in a second language and offers a highly selective honors program where students undertake two-semester thesis research on an international topic under the guidance of two faculty advisors while participating in a dedicated honors thesis seminar.

The concentration is administered by the International Relations Program that is located within the Watson Institute for International Studies. 

 

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