Terrorism and Political Violence MLitt

Each module typically comprises:

• one-hour lecture per week
• one-hour tutorial or seminar per week
• office hours
• 100% coursework assessment.

Students must take the following compulsory module:

• Research Methods: presents appropriate research methods to enable students to critically understand the professional literature, and to lay the foundations to enable students to engage in further research.

and choose one compulsory module from the following:

• Fundamental Issues and Structures of Terrorism: introduces the core conceptual issues of Terrorism and Political Violence.
• Terrorism after 1945: provides an overview of the evolution, characteristics, and decline of terrorist movements and campaigns since 1945.

Students choose two of the following optional modules:

• Fundamentals of Terrorist Violence: examines how combatants in terrorist groups are able to overcome inhibitions to killing.
• Gender and Terrorism: familiarises students with how gender is a construction that privileges certain actors over and against others.
• Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict: familiarises students with different approaches that seek to explain how ethnicity and nationhood are created and maintained, how different forms of ethnic conflict and ethnic violence come about, and what possible mechanisms to contain nationalism and ethnic conflict are.
• Terrorism and Liberal Democracy: addresses conceptual and definitional issues concerning terrorism; the relationship of terrorism to other forms of political violence; the origins, dynamics and development of contemporary terrorism; the efficacy of terrorism as a political weapon; the dilemmas and challenges of liberal democratic state responses to terrorism; and case studies in terrorism and counter-terrorism.
• Terrorism and Theories of Collective Action: addresses issues such as what it means to take a 'political collective action' approach to terrorism; social movement theory and terrorism; understanding recruitment and mobilisation in terrorism and high-risk activism; terrorism and the collective action repertoire; terrorism in the context of transnational activism.

Each student is supported by a relevant supervisor from the School who will advise on the choice of subject and provide guidance throughout the research process.

The completed dissertation must be submitted by a date specified in August.

If students choose not to complete the dissertation requirement for the MLitt, there are exit awards available that allow suitably qualified candidates to receive a Postgraduate Diploma. By choosing an exit award, you will finish your degree at the end of the second semester of study and receive a PGDip instead of a MLitt.