International Studies

This course introduces students to the legal regulation of commercial relationships having strong connections with more than one legal system. Although the focus is on litigation before English courts, an international perspective is adopted. The implications of Brexit in jurisdictional and recognition rules are to be considered. The traditional English principles and rules concerning international commercial litigation form the basis of the law in many, primarily common law, jurisdictions and regained relevance in the light of Brexit. Emphasis is also be placed on the relevant principles and rules of European Union law applicable before the courts across Europe.

This course provides a critical view of global issues that are ubiquitous, but often overlooked or simplified in public debate. It is based on rich illustrations to understand the profound interdependence of social, environmental, economic, and security issues internationally. Topics covered include: conflicts and security; global inequalities; environmental problems or the "return of the sacred"; the diversification of the actors on the world stage; re-geopoliticization of the world; the transformations of the international system; from economic governance or the search for lost regulation; environment and International Relations. This course mobilizes contributions from other perspectives from sociology, political theory, economics, human geography, and global and comparative history.

This course provides a broad and balanced picture of China's even growing presence and influence in the developing world, before and since the launch of its Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. This course examines readings about China in the developing world from Chinese and international sources and perspectives that shed light on the diversity and complexity of this topic. A closely related objective of the course is to encourage students to think critically about the strengths and lessons of China's development model and experience that other developing countries should assess and learn in pursuing their own development paths.

The course provides students with a theoretically-grounded understanding of the role of the European Union as an international actor. Using theories of international relations, European integration and Foreign Policy Analysis, it analyzse and evaluate the EU’s evolving external identity and policy capabilities across a range of external relations, including membership conditionality, trade and development, international crime and terrorism, asylum and immigration, foreign, security and defense policy, and democracy and human rights promotion. The course then examines the nature of key bilateral relationships between the EU and selected countries (US, Russia, and China) and regions (former colonies, regional groups), explaining the extent to which they have been institutionalized and the challenges that define them. It will end by assessing what sort of international actor the EU ‘is’ and ‘wants to be’ – namely civilian, normative or military – and evaluating the likelihood of the EU emerging as a global superpower in the future.