MA Diplomacy

Course outline

The MA Diplomacy aims to help to prepare graduates for careers in foreign and other ministries, international organisations, international journalism and global civil society organisations or for further research. Its modules have been carefully chosen to give students an opportunity to develop their academic skills as well as their practical knowledge of crucial areas of diplomacy such as negotiation and protocol. Areas of study include diplomacy; international law and diplomacy; foreign policy analysis; the evolution of diplomacy; commercial diplomacy; international protocol and etiquette; conflict diplomacy and international negotiation. Part of the Spring term and the whole of the Summer term are devoted to a supervised dissertation on a topic selected by the student in consultation with the academic staff. The courses are taught intensively in lectures, seminars and small group tutorials; they assume little prior knowledge but rapidly bring students to an advanced level of understanding. Buckingham is a small academic community and students have personal and frequent access to their instructors. The programme is also suitable for those without a specific career aim in mind but who wish to acquire an advanced understanding of diplomacy.

An MA in Diplomacy by research is also available. This course is based in London with an integral course of seminars by visiting lecturers of international repute.

Teaching staff

Professor David Armstrong, PhD (ANU), Professor of Global Politics. Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and founder / editor of Diplomacy and Statecraft and editor of the Review of International Studies. He has many publications, initially on aspects of East Asian international relations and in the last twenty years on international organisation and international law. More information about David Armstrong.

Professor Richard Langhorne, MA (Cantab.). Professor of Global Politics, Programme Director of the MA in Global Affairs. Formerly Director of the Centre for International Studies at Cambridge University; Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge; Director of Wilton Park, think-tank and diplomatic conference centre of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office; most recently, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Division of Global Affairs, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA. Author of numerous books, including The Coming of Globalization: Its Evolution and Contemporary Consequences (St Martin’s Press, 2001) and The Essentials of Global Politics (Hodder Arnold, 2005). More information about Richard Langhorne.

Professor Charles Chatterjee, LLM (Cambridge), LLM, PhD (London), Barrister, held a professorial position in international commercial and criminal law at London Metropolitan University. He was also the Campus Director and Chairman of the Graduate Division of an American university for a considerable period of time. He is a Senior Associate Fellow at Warwick University and an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London. He is also a visiting Professorial Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. Professor Chatterjee has published extensively in the form of books and articles in refereed journals on various aspects of public international law, international economic law, energy law, international commercial law, including banking, trade, investment, international commercial arbitration as well as health and criminal law and diplomacy. More information about Charles Chatterjee.

Mr Abdel-ilah Bennis is Vice-President and Director of Research and Training of the London-based Global Diplomatic Forum. After holding several positions, including Head of Political and Consular Affairs at the Moroccan Embassy in London from 1984-1996, he moved into the development and teaching of numerous programmes on diplomacy, culminating in the post of Director of Studies at the Diplomatic Academy of London, Westminster University. More information about Abdel-ilah Bennis.

Claire Smith worked as a British diplomat for 27 years. She served in China, Germany and Pakistan, and her career included periods on loan to the German Foreign Ministry and the Cabinet Office. She  is a fluent German, French and Mandarin speaker. Amongst her current roles, she is a Non-Executive Director of Mott Macdonald, a member of a UK Government appeals panel, and as a former practitioner, has been a visiting lecturer on two MA programmes, specialising in intelligence, foreign policy and crisis management.

Some modules will be taught by visiting lecturers, including current and former diplomats.

Assessment

Assessments for each module will take the form of coursework, innovative papers and occasional oral presentations. In addition to term papers for the taught modules, students on the MA Diplomacy programme will write a single 60-unit dissertation in their Spring and Summer Terms. The dissertation is expected to be 15,000 words in length. Additionally, there is a 15-unit comprehensive examination taken at the end of the student’s programme which draws questions from all areas of the student’s study. The mark obtained for this comprehensive paper, which must be passed, is substituted for the worst passing coursework mark obtained to give the student’s classification profile. Candidates whose total average mark is above 70 are awarded the MA with Distinction; those whose total average mark is between 60 and 69 are awarded the MA with Merit; those whose total average mark is between 50 and 59 are awarded the MA and those whose total average mark is between 40 and 49 are awarded the Diploma. NB The final, comprehensive examination must be passed if the student is to obtain a Master’s Degree.