Supporting excellence through the Politics Fund

Politics at Exeter has a global reputation for excellence, and is consistently ranked in the top 10 in the UK and top 100 internationally, offering exceptionally high-quality research and teaching.

Academic staff in the Politics department at Exeter come from around the world. In addition to their excellent research credentials, they bring experience of working with a broad range of international governments, NGOs and other organisations, where they shape and influence realworld policy. Their research strengths include foreign policy, security, public policy and administration, political campaigns and elections, and political theory. Politics teaching at Exeter is research-led, and our students are offered the chance to take up internships in relevant sectors (for example, through our ‘Westminster Internship’ programme), providing them with real-world experience alongside their studies.

We would like to ensure that Politics students at Exeter are well supported, and to ensure that those with the potential have the ability to progress on to postgraduate study, unhindered by financial difficulty. However, traditional funding awards for Social Science subjects are shrinking dramatically.

At Exeter, of 360 Social Sciences PhD students, only 11% receive funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). As a consequence, postgraduate research is predominantly carried out by students who are able to fund themselves. The traditional route to a PhD is via a one-year Masters programme for which, again, there are few open bursaries. This favours those with independent financial means or those who are prepared to take on a burden of debt; others who are not in this position are largely excluded from research activity.

Will you help drive forward research and support talented students?