Research Degrees

PhD in SGIA

The School of Government and International Affairs is in top 100 in the QS world rankings 2024 for Politics and International Relations; it is 8th in the UK overall in the Complete University Guide 2024; it is 7th in the UK for Politics Graduates Prospects (Complete University Guide 2023). SGIA is known for its cosmopolitan community with nearly half of its academic staff being international and teaching students from over 50 countries.

Research Degrees

SGIA has a large PhD community with more than 60 students on its research programmes. Research students work towards MRES, MPhil and PhD degrees.    

Our research students have access to:  

• A personal workspace in the School  
• A postgraduate only IT space  
• Photocopying and printing facilities  
• Financial support for conferences, research training and fieldwork  
• A wide range of research training and personal development opportunities  
• An inclusive and empowering research environment within the School and across the University 

Expert supervision from global leaders

With eight research units – three research institutes, three research centres and two research groups - our school offers supervision in all subfields of political studies.

The Institute of Middle East and Islamic Studies (IMEIS) has traditionally attracted a significant number of research students from all over the world and is recognised as one of the best places for research in this area.

Durham Global Security Institute (DGSi) also boasts a large PhD cohort offering supervision in areas of defence, development and diplomacy in conflict, conflict prevention and sustainable peace, consolidating peace after violence, post-conflict reconstruction, international law and conflict intervention, and peace processes and everyday political negotiation, among others.

The Global Policy Institute (GPi) is a joint venture with the Durham Law School and supports multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research projects focused on the scholarship, politics, and policy of pressing global collective action problems.

The Centre for Institutions and Political Behaviour (CIPB) offers supervision of empirical research in politics and international relations employing a wide variety of methodologies, ranging from survey data techniques to experimental and quasi-experimental designs, drawing on a vast scope of geographic expertise. The areas of supervision the centre offers span over electoral politics, political parties, electoral violence, public policy and terrorist behaviour, among others.

The Centre for Political Thought (CPT) supervises projects in contemporary political theory as well as history of political thought with significant expertise on theories of justice (distributive justice; global justice; linguistic justice; labour justice; epistemic injustice), concepts of liberty (positive, negative and republican freedom), resistance and revolution in political thought, disability, capability approach, well-being and autonomy, paternalism, social and industrial history; political activism, meaningful work, methodology in contemporary political theory (ideal and non-ideal theory), the ideas of Iris Young, Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, the British idealists, Marx, Republican political thought; Enlightenment political thought, among others.

The Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies (CCCS) offers supervision in areas of right-wing populism in China, COVID-19 narratives on Chinese social media, urban exclusion and global cities formation dynamics, the Belt and Road Initiative, social movements in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Chinese international political economy, business and development and citizenship, civil society and social movements in China, among others.

The Group for Research in International Politics (GRIP) offers supervision in the aeras of international relations theory, Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, the English school in IR theory, critical terrorism studies, global environmental politics, Anthropocene, water security, drones, automatic and autonomous weapons, feminist and queer theories, Jewish Diaspora and Zionism, dystopia; food biopolitics; carceral geographies, and posthumanism, among others.

And finally SGIA’s International Political economy Group (IPEG) offers supervision in the areas of capitalist development, historical materialism, transition to capitalism; agrarian change, neoliberal Africa: the impact of global social engineering, representations of Africa in the construction of Britishness, natural resource governance, environmental politics, global political economy; economic governance; financialisation, Latin American politics and youth and youth policy.

For information about SGIA Research Units and the main points of contact:

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