New school at Uni of Sussex

Updated on: Friday, November 20, 2009

Kolkata: The University of Sussex, Britain, has a new international school on its block - The School of Global Studies including three core disciples- anthropology, geography and international relations. The school offers undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD courses on the range of disciplines with inter-disciplinary approach.

“University of Sussex was established on three core principles- internationalism, inter-disciplinarianism and social activism/work. At Sussex we do not believe in hard boundaries between various disciples as we do not believe world is divided into different category of books. One requires knowledge of other disciplines as well,” said John Sander, senior international liaison officer, University of Sussex.

University of Sussex has also reorganised the structure of university this year, like other universities in Britain are currently doing, reducing the cost of overhead administration significantly and utilising the same money in developing areas like research.

“School of Global Studies is one of the few schools in the world offering global studies with added (if desired) focus on preparing say, an Indian student, in a way he can do further work in the home country itself, or at sub-continental level,” said Kaushik Mitra, country head, University of Sussex, India.

“This school focuses on research and developmental studies in various arts and humanities disciplines, wherein students can opt for a subject as their primary discipline from the core subjects or the host of options like economics, politics, etc, and yet apply to a side course from another discipline when he feels the relevance of that discipline in his main area of study. So an engineering student can easily look up to guidance in business management from a particular professor, in streamlined way,” informed Sander. This kind of an interdisciplinary approach is common in USA, not UK yet.

“This programme is also special from the perspective of Indian students as it directly relates to their country. The school’s courses are based on an international perspective and issues that affect India directly- like climate change, migration studies, anthropology of development, geopolitics, international securities, developmental economics, etc,” said Mitra.

The school also offers the Geopolitics and Grand Strategy program which is the first of its kind in British universities informed Mitra. University of Sussex has international student exchange programs and some of its best professors like Dr Maya Unnithan in Delhi, Prof James Manor and Mick Frogley are currently conducting research in different fields in India.

The course fee for Global Studies will be between 9000-13000 pounds depending on individual course, whose first batch starts in September 2010. Towards living expenses, advisable budget for a student should be 800-900 pound each month, according to Sander.

Applications time for University of Sussex: between now and end of January.

New school at Uni of Sussex

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