SECURITY AND DIPLOMACY IN EUROPE - 2025/6
Module code: POL3087
Module Overview
This cutting-edge final year module introduces students to a range of key debates relating to European and EU security and diplomacy. Students are provided with a series of carefully scaffolded opportunities to engage in contemporary debates on Europe’s ability to operate as a security and foreign policy actor, in national, bilateral and multilateral forms. In addition, the module offers insights, feedback, and assessment forms which cumulatively provide students with opportunities to engage in five key areas: employability, global and cultural capabilities, digital capabilities, sustainability, and resourcefulness and resilience.
European Security and Diplomacy will provide students with in-depth opportunities to consider, analyse, synthesize and critique a wide range of current issues in security and diplomacy in Europe. In doing so, students are presented with first-hand opportunities to engage in a diverse European and international environment, allowing them to compare various political and cultural viewpoints.
Students will develop an understanding of complex issues regarding European actors, institutions, policies, diplomatic and defence structures. In learning about the unique challenges facing European security and diplomacy, students will be provided with key opportunities to develop their capability for sustainable thinking e.g. in tackling governance issues directly connected to the EU’s approach to climate change and sustainability), as well as medium and long-term options for European ‘actorness’ in relation to itself, and others.
Students will be provided with a wide range of opportunities to apply relevant analytical, synthesis-based and critical thinking skills in in this module. The forms of assessment will further require students to invest in both independent and team-based work, strengthening their resourcefulness as young scholars, and deepening their forms of resilience in managing challenges.
Give the wide range of conceptual, documentary, case-based and speech-related materials comprising this area, students will develop a range of research skills in tackling both classic and fast-moving contemporary political issues using a range of primary/secondary sources, including digital portals and repositories. This in turn will underwrite enhanced digital capabilities.
Lastly, the sum total of various in-classroom skills, including developing debating and argumentation skills, alongside the range of soft skills connected to global awareness, digital capabilities, sustainability plus resourcefulness and resilience will cumulatively enable POL3087 students to augment their overall employability.
Module provider
Politics & International Relations
Module Leader
CHAPPELL Laura (Politics IR)
Number of Credits: 15
ECTS Credits: 7.5
Framework: FHEQ Level 6
Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A
Overall student workload
Independent Learning Hours: 100
Seminar Hours: 22
Guided Learning: 14
Captured Content: 14
Module Availability
Semester 2
Prerequisites / Co-requisites
n/a
Module content
Indicative content includes:
- Introduction to the approaches used in Security and Diplomacy
- Key actors in European Security and Diplomacy
- Key country approaches
- Critical challenges in security and diplomacy
Assessment pattern
| Assessment type | Unit of assessment | Weighting |
|---|---|---|
| Coursework | ESSAY (2000 WORDS) | 50 |
| Coursework | POLICY PAPER | 50 |
Alternative Assessment
N/A
Assessment Strategy
The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with a number of opportunities to demonstrate their emerging analytical, comparative, and empirical knowledge of contemporary European security and diplomacy.
The modular assessment pattern enables Level 6 students to bring together skills from previous levels of study and other related modules in addition to POL3087 to analyse these critical debates over.
The first essay offers students a mid-module opportunity to crystallise developing knowledge on broad European security and diplomacy issues within a 2,000 word Essay, by making evident their ability to conduct research and construct a reasoned argument, on the basis of conceptual and empirical evidence.
The 2,000 word Policy Paper builds on that knowledge (including module leader feedback) by requiring individual and collective student engagement in preparing, presenting and reflecting on a pressing geopolitical European issue within the format of a ‘simulated summit’.
Using both an Essay (2,000 words) and a Policy Paper (2,000 words), the module’s assessment strategy is thus closely aligned to the module aims and outcomes as outlined above.
Formative feedback will be provided in a number of occasions throughout the module.
Module aims
- Provide students with an opportunity to consider, analyse and debate a range of current issues in security and diplomacy in Europe, alongside first-hand opportunity to engage in a diverse European and international environment, comparing various political and cultural viewpoints
- Develop an understanding of complex issues regarding European actors, institutions, policies, diplomatic and defence structures
- Develop capabilities for sustainable thinking, in tackling governance issues directly connected to the EU's approach to climate change and sustainability, as well as medium and long term options for European 'actress' in relations to itself and others.
- Apply relevant analytical skills to the analysis of contemporary security and diplomacy issues, requiring students to invest in both independent and team-based work, strengthening resourcefulness and deepening forms of resilience in managing challenges.
- Develop skills in researching fast-moving contemporary political issues using a range of primary/secondary sources, from a range of conceptual, documentary, case-based and speech-based material, including digital portals and repositories, underwriting enhanced digital capabilities.
- Develop debating and argumentation skills, alongside a range of soft skills connected to global awareness, digital capabilities, sustainability plus resourcefulness and resilience will cumulatively enable POL3087 students to augment their overall employability
Learning outcomes
| Attributes Developed | ||
| 001 | Understand and critically analyse complex security and diplomacy issues in contemporary European politics | KCT |
| 002 | Understand and utilise a range of approaches which can be applied to the study of security and diplomacy | KC |
| 003 | Understand and assess the challenges which different European actors face in the contemporary security environment, and the tasks and implications arising from these | KCPT |
| 004 | Gather, organise and deploy evidence, data and information from a variety of secondary and some primary sources on security and diplomacy to construct a reasoned argument | KCT |
| 005 | Make use of the diverse European and international environment represented in both. modular material and the classroom composition to compare various political and cultural viewpoints, and in particular to ask whether ideologies are applicable in contexts other than those defined by a Western and European understanding of modernity. In this sense the module enhances global and cultural capabilities | KC |
| 006 | Develop the capacity for sustainable thinking in relation to European security and diplomacy options | KCPT |
| 007 | Strengthen resourcefulness and resilience, digital capabilities and overall enhance employability in managing modular assessment-based challenges, including a policy-oriented essay, engaging with a group to prepare a given policy stance, negotiating that policy within a simulated European-level summit and writing a concluding policy piece with personal reflection. | PT |
Attributes Developed
C - Cognitive/analytical
K - Subject knowledge
T - Transferable skills
P - Professional/Practical skills
Methods of Teaching / Learning
The learning and teaching strategy is designed to:
- Encourage critical engagement with European security and diplomacy
- Facilitate the analysis of contemporary European security and diplomacy issues
- Encourage the use of transferable research skills to support independent research
The learning and teaching methods include:
Lecture/seminar workshops
In additions, prescribed reading, group discussions, captured content and other digital resources will be available to support students via SurreyLearn and in-class.
Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.
Reading list
https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: POL3087
Other information
n/a
Programmes this module appears in
| Programme | Semester | Classification | Qualifying conditions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public Affairs MPA | 2 | Optional | A weighted aggregate mark of 40% is required to pass the module |
| Law with International Relations LLB (Hons) | 2 | Optional | A weighted aggregate mark of 40% is required to pass the module |
| Politics BSc (Hons) | 2 | Optional | A weighted aggregate mark of 40% is required to pass the module |
| International Relations BSc (Hons) | 2 | Optional | A weighted aggregate mark of 40% is required to pass the module |
| Politics and Sociology BSc (Hons) | 2 | Optional | A weighted aggregate mark of 40% is required to pass the module |
Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2025/6 academic year.