Glasgow's distinguished history of teaching politics began in the 1760s, when Adam Smith gave a series of lectures on justice, police, revenue and arms at the University.

Today we are a leading centre for teaching and researching Politics and International Relations in the UK. We comprise more than 40 teaching and research staff and are distinctive for our concentrations of expertise in:

  • Comparative Politics – the quality of democracy, authoritarianism, immigration and refugees.
  • International Relations – emotions, war and the European Union’s external relations.
  • Area Studies – the politics of China, Russia, Southern Europe and Latin America, in some of which we work closely with colleagues in Central and East European Studies.
  • Political Theory - the Scottish Enlightenment, distributive justice, the philosophy of governance, philosophy of social science.