Inspires - Department of Politics and International Relations ...

WelcomeStephen Whitefield has been the Head ofDepartment since 1 September 2010. Here hewelcomes readers and explains some of thecontemporary challenges and opportunitiesfacing the Department of Politics andInternational RelationsEveryone knows Gilbert Ryle’s oldphilosophical joke: a prospectivestudent visits Oxford and sees Balliol,Christ Church and Exeter Colleges, and asksthe tour guide, ‘But where is the university?’,having been under the assumption that it isa different place altogether. But, for those ofyou who matriculated fifteen years ago andread PPE at Merton, St John’s, Somervilleor elsewhere or perhaps did the MPhil atNuffield or St Antony’s, the question might be:‘But where is the Department of Politics andInternational Relations?’Until ten years ago, Politics matters in Oxfordwere managed by the Sub-Faculty of Politics.You may recall that its administrative heart, sofar as it had one, was located in George Streetin the same building as the Social StudiesLibrary. It was pleasant, with a commonroom and small seminar room. Coordinationacross Politics as a whole was rather limited,and colleges and college tutors were central.But, the world was already changing. Thegovernment inspectors were inspecting ourteaching; research funding was becomingmore important (and we were subject to yetmore inspection); our graduate programmeswere growing. And so, to meet the challengesof modernity, the Department of Politics andInternational Relations was born. And, judgingby its enormous growth over the last ten years,the external recognition we have achieved asthe top-ranked Department in the UK for ourteaching and the student experience, and bythe fact that we have the largest number oftop-rated researchers of any Department inthe country too, we have responded to thosechallenges tremendously well.So, the simplest answer to the question,‘Where is the Department of Politics andInternational Relations (along with Economicsand Sociology)?,’ is that its administrativeheart is now located on Manor Road in anappropriately modern new building designedby Norman Foster, with many lecture andseminar rooms as well as offices and a largecafé. Students come to visit the relocatedSocial Sciences Library and attend lecturesthere more frequently than they attendSchools. Many of our graduate students onMPhils and DPhils have desks and computers,and some academics also have (largelyshared) offices there too, particularly whenthey are involved in burgeoning Departmentaladministration. I am the third Head ofDepartment, after Mark Philp and mostrecently Neil Macfarlane each served fiveyears. They were the institutional builders.I am trying hard not to mess things up.But, the simplest answer won’t really do.For one thing, our building could not housethe nearly 100 academics and hundredsof students, even if the various ‘teethingproblems’ in the building with the heatingand air conditioning were sorted out and theywanted to leave their colleges. But moreimportantly, the Department is and wants to bespatially and intellectually diversely located.We are self-avowedly pluralist in our teachingand research with enough of us to operate onthe ‘zoo principle’ – two of everything. And wework, happily but with occasional friction, in aCollegiate University, which means that almostall of us wear two hats of Department andCollege, if seldom at the same time. So, as mycolleague Sudhir Hazareesingh at Balliol put it:Where is the Department? It is really locatedall over the University!My hope is that some of that spirit ofpluralism of academic endeavour as well aspluripresence will be evident in this the firstissue of the Department’s Alumni magazineInspires. Why are we launching Inspiresnow? Because the challenges – from thegovernment, for the needs of our students(graduate and undergraduate) and to continueour research – keep on coming, if anythingever more briskly, and to meet them we needthe support and understanding of our closestfriends, our alumni. So, we aim to show youhere a few of the many exciting things that arehappening in the Department in the hope thatyou will want to be involved with us in years tocome.4