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The UCL Department of Geography will launch a new MSc in September 2005.

'Geographies of Globalisation' will look at the international impact of globalisation from geopolitical and geo-economic points of view. The focus will be on how globalisation is transforming the traditional spaces of politics - the nation state, sub-state regions and emerging macro-entities such as the EU - and on the sorts of changes in economic networks and organisation that these processes entail.

The degree aims to offer a solid, academic programme in the geopolitics of globalisation, providing an ideal grounding for PhD study, but which is also a complete programme of study in itself.

The department hopes to draw students from a variety of academic disciplines and backgrounds onto 'Geographies of Globalisation', and the initial 2005 applicants have studied a variety of subjects for their first degree, and come from countries across the world. In addition, the UCL team of academics due to teach on the course come from across Europe and North America, providing a truly international perspective.

Dr Mark Bassin, a specialist in cultural and political geography who will teach the geopolitics modules of the course (and who originated in the USA), explained: "We are a very strong teaching and research department but, up until now, our masters teaching in human geography has focused largely on cultural-historical and environmental themes. With our new course 'Geographies of Globalisation' we seek to enhance our profile by drawing on the department's strengths in political and economic geography."

Globalisation has become a veritable buzzword in recent years, and Dr Bassin hopes that the course will help students to deconstruct what the term actually means: "There are a number of masters courses focusing on globalisation in the UK, but none quite like this, with a primary focus on political and economic geography. Our intention, moreover is to engage with the issues critically, interrogating the extent to which globalisation is truly an inevitable process, and what sort of countervailing tendencies it brings with it,"

'Geographies of Globalisation' should also result in collaborations with departments throughout the university, particularly the UCL School of Slavonic & East European Studies (SSEES) and the newly formed UCL Department of Political Science.

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