Centre of Advanced International Studies

The sculpture is called Dual Form and is by the Cornish artist Barbara Hepworth. Her ‘Single Form' sculpture was commissioned by the United Nations as a memorial to Dag Hammarskjold at the United Nations in New York.

Welcome to the Centre of Advanced International Studies (CAIS) at the University of Exeter. Research and teaching in the broad area of international studies has a long history at Exeter. We have good reasons to think that international studies at Exeter have an even better future.

The aim of CAIS is to foster, develop and disseminate international quality research and postgraduate teaching into diverse aspects of global social relations, across political, economic and cultural realms.

Today no regions are isolated. Actions and interventions in remote places have immediate worldwide impact. Old orders are crumbling and new issues and forces are threatening our human future. We need new ideas to respond to these challenges international studies has an important role to play in deepening our understanding of this world of our making; it can reveal how the current order has been shaped by the complex interplay of actors, social forces and institutions.

Here at CAIS, we share a commitment to pursuing research and delivering educative programmes that are theoretically informed, critically inclined, and socially and politically relevant. A unique feature of CAIS is that it seeks to be the bridge between policy relevant regional studies (particularly in Middle East and Central Asian Politics) and the increasing global character of political theory: our faculty reflects the interplay of all three subfields of political science.

The following page provides a road-map of CAIS:

An overview of international studies at Exeter
Recent and current research
CAIS Faculty and Fellows
Research priorities and interests of CAIS members
Taught postgraduate programmes in CAIS
CAIS seminar series
Key publications written by CAIS faculty
European Journal of International Relations
Visiting possibilities for research students or faculty

Latest news can be found here

Latest news

13 June, 2012 – Lucy Morgan Edwards will visit the department to speak on her book, The Afghan Solution: The Inside Story of Abdul Haq, the CIA and how Western hubris lost Afghanistan (2011).

20-21 March, 2012 – The Second Annual Exeter Central Asian Studies Graduate Research Workshop will include research students from Aberdeen, Aberystwyth, Bristol, Exeter, Oxford, SOAS, St Andrews and Warwick. A keynote address will be given by Dr Alisher Khamidov (University of Newcastle) to the title 'Central Asia at 20'.

16 February, 2012 – John Heathershaw (Senior Lecturer in International Relations), Asel Doolotkeldieva (Graduate Student) and Anna Matveeva (Honorary University Fellow) visited the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to brief the incoming British Ambassadors to both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

15 February, 2012 - Anna Matveeva (Honorary University Fellow), former research director of the Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission into the ethnic violence in Central Asia in June 2010, gave a lecture entitled 'Truth-telling after conflict: the international Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission and the 2010 ethnic violence'

6-7 December, 2011 – John Heathershaw (Senior Lecturer in International Relations) was an invited speaker at the international conference, «State and Religions: the Challenges of Secularism», Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The conference involved senior representatives of the Government of Tajikistan, the Islamic clergy and representatives of academia and civil society, as well as foreign experts from Germany, France and the UK.