Employability skills
The War Studies BA Programme provides you with a sophisticated understanding of war, both as a
subject worthy of study in its own right and as an intellectual preparation for the widest possible
range of career choices. During the degree, you take courses on the causes, experience and conduct of
war, and you may then focus on an individually tailored mix of option courses ranging from ancient to
21st century warfare and from strategy and intelligence to international relations.
The Department’s BA curriculum is designed not only to provide you with extensive academic
knowledge and understanding, but also to cultivate other skills which contribute directly to
employability. After leaving us, students follow a wide variety of different career pathways in the
private, public or charity sectors, including research, analysis, management, education,
communications and media. Some students move directly into related posts such as government, the
armed services, academia, international organisations, defence analysis, journalism or museum work,
while others pursue broader careers in a wide range of fields. They all benefit from their combination
of academic and other skills, designed expressly to enhance employability and aid professional career
development. These skills include the following key areas:

Conceptual Skills: The inherently interdisciplinary nature of the BA degree requires you to
master a wide range of theoretical approaches to war, including history, politics, international
relations, sociology and philosophy. You learn to think creatively and to study and solve
problems from a variety of different disciplinary perspectives. All of this helps to foster the
kind of agile and adaptable thinking which modern employment increasingly requires.

Analytical Skills: Throughout your degree, you learn how to study a wide range of (often
contradictory) evidence, analyse complex and controversial issues, arrive at your own
individual judgements, and present and defend those conclusions in effective arguments. Clear
and logical thinking and problem solving are fundamental skills which you develop throughout
the degree, and these are perhaps the most important skills of all for your future graduate
employment.

Organisational and Research Skills: you are taught to work on your own initiative and show
self-reliance. As well as following the curriculum and the set readings for each module
(including effective use of library and online sources), you are required increasingly to define
your own projects and to learn how to conduct independent research. You must take at least
one 2nd year module which requires you to define and conduct such a research project, and the
3rd year dissertation builds on this experience as you produce a 10,000 word essay on an
original research topic of your choice, usually involving archival study or the arrangement and
conduct of in-depth interviews.

Project Management Skills: You learn how to manage increasingly extensive projects from
start to finish.
This involves managing your time effectively, and learning how to prioritise
and plan your timetable and actions with specific objectives in mind. The culmination of this
growing project management challenge is again the dissertation, which requires you to define
your project in the 2nd year, obtain ethical approval for associated interviews, conduct the bulk
of the research during the summer vacation, and write up the thesis in your final year. You are
supported in this challenging endeavour by generic classroom and online research training and
by multiple one-to-one tutorials with your individual academic supervisor.

Professional Skills: You learn to exercise all the generic skills expected of graduate
employees. This includes personal responsibility, probity and reliability, being in the right
place at the right time, working to deadlines, using computers and the internet, and submitting
written work which is clearly and grammatically expressed, of the required length, and
properly presented and proof read.
You also learn to take on board feedback on your
performance and to make incremental and continuous improvements by learning from
experience. You are encouraged to gain practical experience of employment during your
degree (especially during the summer vacations), and the Department’s location in the heart of
London and close contacts with government, policy institutes and the media offer unrivalled
opportunities for securing internships and other posts.

Communication Skills: You learn how to organise and present your arguments effectively
both in writing and in oral communication. Submitting written coursework and sitting timed
unseen exams throughout the degree teaches you to express yourself in a concise and
professional manner. Participation in seminar discussions builds your skill and confidence in
oral arguments, and you are also required increasingly to contribute to formal presentations
and debates, making appropriate use of audio-visual aids. This culminates in the 3rd year when
you must make an individual oral presentation to your colleagues on your dissertation topic,
followed by a question session and by detailed feedback from your supervisor on how to make
even better presentations in future.

Team-working Skills: You learn to work with your colleagues effectively and in a professional
manner. This includes sharing out tasks for greater efficiency, agreeing fair divisions of labour,
coordinating joint efforts without a clearly designated leader, and learning how to handle
differences in ability or commitment within the group. Especially in the 2nd and 3rd years, we
place considerable emphasis on such team-working skills, including using peer review within
the teams and having students assessed collectively rather than individually for some team
presentations and group projects. This directly addresses one of the key skills sets which
employers often request.