Historical Research in Political Science

Political science is centrally concerned with understanding how politics works. It’s a discipline of the present tense, and the bulk of our research focuses on gathering evidence in the here and now. But sometimes political scientists also dig into the past. From time to time, you’ll even find one of us trawling through the records in a dusty archive. We are discussing one particular ongoing example of historical research in political science - at prisoner-of-war camps in the UK in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. We are joined by:Zeynep Bulutgil,Professor in International Relations. Regular listeners may remember in episode we did with her back in 2022 on the origins of the secular state.Sam Erkiletian, a final-year PhD student who’s just about to submit his dissertation on patterns of socialization in groups of combatants. Mentioned in this episode:Bulutgil, H. Zeynep, The Origins of Secular Institutions: Ideas, Timing, and Organization.
UCL’s Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy offers a uniquely stimulating environment for the study of all fields of politics, including international relations, political theory, human rights, public policy-making and administration. The Department is recognised for its world-class research and policy impact, ranking among the top departments in the UK on both the 2021 Research Excellence Framework and the latest Guardian rankings.