Reading, Thinking, Doing International Relations

This course is open to, and compulsory for, all currently enrolled HDR students in the Department of International Relations. It should be completed in the first year of enrolment. It will be exploring a wide range of material chosen by colleagues in the IR department. It is aimed at cultivating two important scholarly practices. The first is generosity, i.e. taking the strongest possible version of an argument and reading it as sympathetically as possible. The second, linked, practice is internal critique, i.e. reading texts through what the author sets out to do and exploring to what extent their logic and evidence bear out these goals.