International Relations - Senior Thesis

In general, International Relations (IR) focuses on interactions among different countries’ governments, or on issues that cross international borders, as well as different perspectives on IR.

International Relations topics centered on interactions among countries’ governments include such categories as:

• International war and related national security issues such as weapons, alliances, etc
• The international economy, such as trade, foreign aid, poverty, inequality, etc
• International law, including treaties, war crimes, the international court of justice, the international criminal court, etc
• International organizations, such as the United Nations, regional organizations (such as the European Union, the Organization of American States, the African Union, etc), UN-affiliated agencies such as the World Health Organization, and Non-Governmental Organizations
• Foreign Policy, whether US Foreign Policy or the foreign policies of other governments

International Relations topics can also include issues that cross international borders, even when governments are not the primary actors. Those can include such topical categories as:

• Global population topics, such as migration
• Global health topics, such as pandemics
• Global environmental topics, such as climate change
• Global national security threats that come from non-state actors, such as terrorist groups, drug cartels, human traffickers, or other violent organizations
• Food security, water security, and much more

International Relations also intersects with theory research, offering different ways of thinking about IR, including many diverse perspectives such as:

• International Relations theories such as realism, liberalism, constructivism, or any of several critical theories such as neo-Marxism and IR feminism
• Movements of resistance in international and global politics
• Colonial legacies in foreign policies, international institutions, or global politics more in general. For example, how do racist biases persist in the foreign policy of the USA, and how is this issue connected to colonial understandings of Indigenous peoples, Latinx folks, Black persons, Muslims, etc
• The colonial legacies, biases, and limitations in traditional theories of IR such as liberalism, realism, and Marxism
• The contributions and forms of resistance that emerge from “critical” approaches such as post-colonialism, post-structuralism, feminism, Indigenous theories, queer theories, green theory, decolonial voices, and so on. In some cases, we study how these theories intersect with social, Indigenous, feminist, queer, environmental, or labor movements.

In addition to the topical and theoretical diversity of International Relations, the field also includes different methodologies. For example, International Relations includes traditional forms of positivism, which primarily study the causes, consequences, and characteristics of international phenomena. Additionally, the field of International Relations includes interpretivist methodologies, which concentrate on understanding how meanings shape international and global politics. This methodology often aims to examine how things are justified, understood, or constructed in the structures of international politics that affect actors or in the forms of resistance that aim to change them.