University of Glasgow

This course explores core questions which lie at the heart of International Political Economy (IPE), the discipline that studies the interactions between states and international markets and the governance of the global economic system. These include, among others: how do politics shape international economic relations and vice versa; who are the winners and losers of economic globalization? Is the global economy stable and why do economic crises happen; why is regional integration so widespread today?

Students engage with the cultures and histories of Scotland through a multi-disciplinary perspectives offered by archaeology, Celtic languages, history, and literature all with the common question of how Scottish society has interacted with the outside world. Students consider how Scotland’s migratory, economic, intellectual, and cultural links overseas as well as its own distinctive experience of globalization influenced the development of a range of other societies while simultaneously transforming the country’s own domestic character and culture. This central theme of both influencing and being influenced by links with the outside world enables students to assess the global history of a non-US society in a multi-disciplinary way. In doing so, this course demonstrates how humanities-based disciplines explore the mutually influencing nature of the global, the national, and the local.