Modern Languages and Politics

Modern languages and politics is a combination that equips you to engage with the world's political life across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Modern languages develop the real communicative proficiency, literary understanding and cultural knowledge that allow you to engage directly with societies beyond the English-speaking world. Politics provides the analytical frameworks for understanding how power is organised, how democracies function and how global forces reshape national and international life.

At the University of Leeds you will develop fluency in your chosen language alongside a serious engagement with political science, examining concepts such as colonialism, nationalism, democracy, revolution, gender and globalisation. Optional topics extend across political systems around the globe, translation and interpreting, and the relationship between media and democracy. The programme runs over four years full time and includes a sandwich year in industry and work placement opportunities, giving you professional experience alongside your linguistic and political development.

Graduates of modern languages and politics are valued across a very wide range of international and professional careers. Diplomacy, the foreign service, international organisations, journalism, translation and interpreting, teaching, international business, policy research and non-governmental organisations all draw on the combination of linguistic competence and political analytical skill that this degree develops. The ability to engage with political processes and texts directly in another language is genuinely uncommon and valued wherever organisations need people who can operate across cultural and linguistic boundaries.

Postgraduate study in modern languages, political science, international relations, translation or area studies is a natural further route.