About The Department

The Department of International Relations celebrated its 75th anniversary during the year 2002-2003.

International Relations has been taught at LSE since 1924 when Philip Noel-Baker was appointed to a new, privately-endowed Chair of International Relations. The Department, which was set up three years later, was not only the first of its kind, but has remained a leading world centre for the development of the subject ever since. Its reputation for international excellence was recognised in the last HEFCE Research Selectivity Exercise, in which the IR and Government Departments, assessed as one unit, were awarded a "5".  The Department was also graded (with the Government Department, European Institute and Development Studies Institute) as 22 out of 24 by the [teaching] Quality Assurance Agency in October 2000.

For thirty years the Department was led by Charles Manning, ably assisted by Martin Wight, whose LSE lectures influenced several generations of students.  These were finally published in 1992 by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, under the title International Theory: The Three Traditions.  In the early years the Department drew heavily on other disciplines, in particular Diplomatic History and International Law; but in the 1960s the leadership passed to Geoffrey Goodwin and Fred Northedge, both of whom were graduates of the Department. They maintained the earlier emphasis on interdepartmental co-operation and interdisciplinary research. The Centre for International Studies, set up in 1967, and the graduate programme in European Studies launched in 1972, owe much to Goodwin's personal effort and enthusiasm, as the student-run journal, Millennium, does to Northedge.

The Department is sometimes associated with the development of a specifically 'English School' of International Relations. But although many of its leading figures -- Wight, Bull, Vincent, Donelan -- have indeed taught within the Department, it has never endorsed a particular orthodoxy. Indeed, many developments in the subject have been pioneered within the Department such as the increasing concern with international political economy and the international impact of revolution, which owe much to the work and inspiration of Susan Strange and Fred Halliday respectively. We aim to cover the major theoretical perspectives on the subject and, empirically, the major regions of the world.

The Department has always been strongly international in character, and today the majority of our graduate students, and a good proportion of our undergraduates, are drawn from Europe, North America and further afield. At the same time we have always prided ourselves as having both a national and an international role in training future university teachers. We can count at least fifty former students now teaching International Relations in universities in Britain and abroad.

This page last modified on January 8, 2008

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