Europe: United Kingdom “Teaching IR Theory in the United Kingdom”

This chapter addresses the practice of teaching IR theory to audiences in the United Kingdom. It begins by laying out IR’s context in terms of the student body, the current context of UK Higher Education (HE), the structures of these institutions, and the global marketplace of HE. It examines the influence of teaching practices in United Kingdom HE and how they shape IR and theories of IR, before looking specifically at the field of IR theory and the author’s own experiences teaching it. Understanding the teaching of IR in the UK is an inherently reflexive undertaking. It is important to note the central role the United Kingdom played in global affairs that preceded the foundation of the discipline - and while waning - has played since; at the same time as the discipline developed after the First World War with a fulcrum of UK based scholars, publications, and students.