Why study with us?

The Department has a reputation for teaching excellence of which it is justly proud: in 2001 our programmes were given the top rating for our teaching provision by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), this rating was confirmed again in 2005 by a panel of internal and external reviewers.
We offer expert supervision for MPhil/PhD research across the discipline, especially in political theory, political sociology, public policy, global politics, and nationalism.
Our primary teaching commitment remains the provision of top-quality undergraduate and postgraduate education to part-time students in full-time employment.

All of our Master's programmes can be taken in one year full-time or two years part-time.
Our MPhil/PhD can be taken either full-time or part-time.
Most of our undergraduate students choose to study part-time, completing Bachelor's degrees in four years.
Classes for BA and MA courses are scheduled in the evenings, while tutorials and PhD supervision take place at times mutually convenient for students and staff.

Our academic staff attract funding from a variety of sources to undertake cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines.
In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, 45% of our research output was deemed to be of international significance, with a proportion of that being judged either internationally excellent or world-leading.
Our performance placed us in the top 20 Politics departments in the UK, alongside Durham, Manchester and Cambridge.

We are located in central London (WC1), at the heart of the University of London.
We are based in 10 Gower Street, an elegant Regency house once frequented by famous Bloomsbury writers such as T.S. Eliot, Bernard Shaw and Maynard Keynes.
Our location offers access to high quality learning resources: we are a 10 minute walk from the British Library, and just around the corner from the main Birkbeck building and the British Museum.

We recognise no intellectual boundaries between politics, political history, political theory and sociology.
Our degrees transcend these distinctions to provide a combination of expertise and course that has no equivalent in any other department in the UK.
We aim to equip our graduates with a sophisticated understanding of the conceptual and theoretical bases of the disciplines, their methods of inquiry, and their domains of knowledge – read more about our aims.

Many of our students have established themselves professionally and, as a result, the breadth of knowledge they bring enriches the intellectual life of the Department for students and faculty alike.
Every student is assigned a personal tutor, who can answer queries about your work and can assist you if you are experiencing difficulties.
If you are coming back to studying after taking a break, we provide a wide range of learning support and skills training.
Our staff and facilities are geared towards catering for busy professionals, making us quite distinctive from other institutions.

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