WHY STUDY INTERNATIONAL HISTORY and Politics?
The International History and Politics Department of the Graduate Institute is the oldest school of international relations in Europe. Located in Geneva – the site of multiple international, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental organisations – we offer our students a unique opportunity: to pursue historical research and analysis in an interdisciplinary setting while living in a city that has been at the forefront of multilateral diplomacy for over a century.
A Dynamic Study Plan
The particular contribution of the International History and Politics Department is to bring a historical methodology to the study of international affairs, including policy-making, political systems and institutions. These methods – specifically qualitative and textual analysis, archival research, oral history, and attention to structural change and continuities over time – allow students to coherently link history, politics and the contemporary environment.
A Master’s degree in international history and politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute provides a set of tools for a practical career in politics and diplomacy as well as in the private sector. The same methods that make for a great international historian are an indispensable asset in the fast-changing world of global politics.
The Department’s mission is to encourage dynamic and cross-cutting historical approaches to understanding, contextualising, and situating current international politics and policies. Members of the faculty teach and research governmental and non-governmental actors and organisations; human rights, humanitarianism and humanitarian actions/interventions; development politics, policies and ideologies; nation-building and state-building; civil society and social movements, gender, women and public policies, labour, employment and trade unions; international and global public health; environment and environmentalisms, climate change and political ecologies; immigrants, refugees and diasporas; international finance and economy; conflicts and international security issues, political violence and terrorism; transnational actors, institutions, histories and processes; and foreign policies, multilateral diplomacy, negotiations and co-operation, regional integration, and North-South relations.
Master Programme
The Master in International History and Politics is a rigorous, two-year degree. It provides students with up-to-date critical, analytical and methodological tools and encourages historically-informed approaches to current policy, politics, economics and culture.
Courses, seminars, and research projects in the Department cluster around the intersecting themes of international relations, institutions and movements. Our thematic reach includes global/world and transnational history; history and policy; the history of ideas; the Global South and postcoloniality; international economic relations and relationships. Our geographic expertise covers most of the globe, with particular strengths in the histories of such individual regions as the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, East and South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
- The MA degree combines coursework, workshops, research and a thesis.
- It encourages direct contact, debates and exchange with faculty and fellow students.
- Compulsory courses introduce the aims, substance and criticisms of the various approaches to international, transnational and global/world history.
- Research training is focused on individual and collective work based on primary and secondary sources.
- Students take elective courses in anthropology and sociology, economics, international law and international relations/political science, taught in the departments concerned.
- Students can undertake an internship for academic credit
