Politics and Spanish

Politics and Spanish is a combination that makes particularly strong sense given the importance of the Spanish-speaking world in international affairs. Spanish is spoken by over 500 million people across Spain and Latin America, and the political histories of those countries, including colonialism and its legacy, democracy and its fragility, populism and social movements, are among the most instructive and important in global politics. Studying politics and Spanish together allows you to engage with those histories and their contemporary implications both through the analytical frameworks of political science and through the language and literature of the Spanish-speaking world itself.

At Queen's University Belfast, this four-year full-time programme develops both political analysis and linguistic competence alongside one another. On the politics side, you will study political theory, political institutions, and international relations, developing the conceptual tools for understanding how power works and how political life is organised at national and global levels. The Spanish element builds your language skills from whatever level you enter, whether as a beginner or with A-level experience, through core language modules that develop written and spoken proficiency.

Cultural and literary study enriches the language learning, giving you a rounded understanding of the Spanish-speaking world. You will examine a wide range of literary, political, social, cultural, and linguistic aspects of Spanish-speaking countries across the globe.

Graduates from politics and Spanish programmes are well placed for careers in the civil service and foreign office, international organisations, journalism, NGOs, business development in Latin American or Spanish markets, education, research, and cultural diplomacy. The combination of political analytical skills and linguistic competence in the world's second most widely spoken language is distinctively valuable in international careers. Postgraduate study in politics, international relations, area studies, or Hispanic studies provides a natural continuation.