Our scholars are internationally regarded and supported by distinctive research centres.

The quality of our research has a direct impact on our teaching, putting you right at the cutting edge of political research.

The department is recognised for its commitment to high quality research, according to the Research Excellence Framework 2014 - the biggest periodic assessment of academic research in the world.

The Times Higher Education placed the department as 10th in our field in the UK, in terms of research intensity (Times Higher Education, REF 2014 ranking by intensity). This is considered by many scholars to be the most rigorous measure of research excellence because it takes into account the proportion of staff from the department who are active researchers.

72% of the department’s research is judged to be world-leading and internationally-excellent. We were also recognised for the  'originality, significance and rigour' of our research. Moreover, more than three-quarters of the submissions made were judged to have ‘outstanding’ or ‘very considerable impacts’ in terms of their reach and significance.