As part of PAIS’s commitment to raise awareness of the issues that students of colour and ethnic minorities face amongst the PAIS community, to address the race and ethnicity-based attainment gap, and to campaign against racism in all its forms, PAIS is introducing an Race and Ethnic Minority Student Liaison Representative position at the UG, PGT and PGR level.

We are delighted to announce that the Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) at the University of Warwick is ranked 4^th out of 80 UK Politics Departments in The Times/The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2021. This prestigious league table also places us 1^st in the Russell Group for both ‘teaching quality’ and ‘student experience’.

This follows recent rankings of 4^th in The Complete University Guide 2021 and 6^th in The Guardian University Guide 2021 making PAIS one of the most consistently top-ranked Politics Department in the UK. For the last seven years, PAIS has held a ‘Top 7’ place in all three major national league tables:

Professor Nick Vaughan-Williams, Head of PAIS, commented: “Congratulations to all on another outstanding outcome. Our winning formula for success means that we enjoy a consistent appearance at the very top of all major national league tables. Students and staff know that PAIS is a special Department in which every member of the community is supported to find their own voice and reach their full potential. Such consistency and high levels of support are arguably more important than ever as we face these turbulent times together”.

Dr Justin Greaves, Director of Student Experience and Progression, commented: “This is brilliant news for the PAIS Department and all our students, alumni, and staff. It follows our great success in the 2020 National Student Survey (NSS) where we were 1^st or 2^nd in the Russell Group in 6 categories, including 1^st for overall student satisfaction. These consistent results are a testament to the hard work and brilliance of everyone who works and studies in PAIS, along with our ethos as viewing students as partners, producers, and collaborators, and valuing and acting on student feedback. I look forward to working with our incoming and returning students to ensure that the PAIS Department continues to go from strength to strength. Congratulations everyone”!

Thank you to all our students and staff for PAIS' continued success.

Overall the University of Warwick is ranked 10th.

The Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) is delighted to announce that we have reclaimed our place as number 1 for overall student satisfaction in the Russell Group in the 2020 National Student Survey (NSS). *

Other highlights amongst our Russell Group peers include:

• 1^st for Assessment and Feedback
• 1^st for Organisation and Management
• 1^st for Learning Resources
• 1^st for Student Voice
• 2^nd for academic support

The 2020 results show that we are in 1st or 2^nd place in the Russell Group for 6 of the 9 NSS categories, 1^st on 12 questions and in the top 3 on 18 of the 27 questions.

With 5 years in either 1^st or 2^nd place on overall student satisfaction amongst the Russell Group, these results demonstrate our partnership with the student body and our sustained commitment to the student experience.

In the 2020 NSS our BA Politics degree received 95% overall satisfaction. Across all programmes with which we are involved - both single and joint honours - we achieved 88%. The Russell Group average for Politics was 79.65%.

These impressive outcomes are due to an outstanding team effort among our fantastic students, academic and professional services colleagues and demonstrate a partnership which we are extremely proud of. Thank you to everyone for all your hard work and support for our teaching and student experience in which has been a very challenging year for all concerned.

We look forward to continuing to work in partnership with our amazing students and dedicated staff to sustain and build on these strong results, which reflect our deep commitment to research-led teaching excellence. At the start of the new academic year we will feedback in greater detail to all students and we will discuss and take forward ideas for further enhancement of the PAIS student experience via our Student Staff Liaison Committees (SSLCs).

In particular, we will intensify our work on liberating and decolonising the curriculum and building a sense of community and belonging. We will support and promote student wellbeing and work with partner Departments to ensure continued excellence across all programmes, in particular joint degrees.

*See the Office for Students website for more details and the full data. The results are based on the official Common Aggregation Hierarchy (CAH) subject breakdowns and the 20 Russell Group institutions which met the publications threshold for Politics.

Congratulations to Warwick Politics Society for being voted Academic Society of the Year 2019/20 in the Warwick Students’ Union Awards, under Student voice and Impact.

We are delighted to hear of their well-deserved success. Congratulations to the Exec and to all the members who make Pol Soc so great.

Bryony Jenner, President of the Politics Society, commented:

‘This award reflects the diverse and wide range of events we have held in 19/20, and our turnout figures (with often 100+ members at social and academic events). We have also raised around £2,500 in charity funds (for Mind and Movember), which is a large increase on last year. The Politics Society annual ball was one of the largest, most affordable formal events on offer to students this year, with 200 attendees. Finally, we hosted our first ever Perspectives Awards, albeit virtually, to celebrate our excellent writers, and have had at least 1500 print magazines in circulation’.

The PAIS Department look forward to continuing to work with Pol Soc in the 20/21 academic year!

We are distressed by the continued violence and racism experienced by Black people in the United States, United Kingdom, and beyond. We want an inclusive environment for our community, and we are committed to exploring and understanding how anti-racism can be embedded across our Department. We fully support the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as all our students and staff who are standing in solidarity. We welcome the questions that students and staff are asking about actions that the University of Warwick and the Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) are taking to address racial inequality.

The Students’ Union have issued a statement on Black Lives Matter, which provides a powerful message for our whole community, alongside wellbeing guidance and resources for the Black community.

A Joint Statement from Race Equality Taskforce and the University Executive Board was released on 9 June and can be accessed here: https://warwick.ac.uk/services/equalops/blacklivesmatter. This statement recognises that we are part of a sector and a country where racism has proliferated and is embedded within society. We see this across the sector and at Warwick in the small number of Black and BAME professors, in the Black attainment gap, and, as our students have shared in the Warwick Speak Out report (by Warwick anti-Racism Society and the SU), in the experience of Black students every day, both on our campus and in the classroom. The Joint Statement details some of the actions that the University is taking, whilst also acknowledging that these actions alone do not reflect the enormity of the challenge. The statement clearly lays out the University’s ongoing commitment to developing and working towards our goal of an anti-racist and inclusive University.

At University level, Warwick’s Social Inclusion strategy highlights the need for anti-racism work as an institutional priority. Senior University management have invited departmental leads to attend anti- racist training, so that we can embed anti-racism across the institution. Targets have been set to reduce the student attainment gap, but also to increase the numbers of BAME academics and professional services staff. The University is supporting the work of the Race Equality Taskforce, which brings together academics, professional staff, and SU representatives to identify key issues and effective responses. Academics across the University are engaged in developing resources through forums such as the Anti-Racist Pedagogy Learning Circle. They have recently funded their staff development anti-racist programme, which will be made available across the University.

At Department level, we have been working in partnership with students through our Liberated Curriculum Working Group, with a particular focus on decolonising the curriculum. This partnership has already resulted in significant revisions to our modules to better align them with anti-racist principles, but we will continue this work as part of an ongoing process. We also have active Widening Participation and Equality & Diversity Committees, with student representation, focusing on crucial issues such as diversity in our recruitment and the Attainment Gap in student performance, which we will discuss with our BAME students. We work closely with Schools and through our widening participation and outreach sessions we have been delivering sessions on what to do about colonial- era statues for a number of years. We realise that addressing the Attainment Gap requires long-term measures and that there are rarely quick fixes, but as a Politics and International Studies department we want to be at the forefront of changes that serve to tackle this issue. One of our key long-term initiatives is the Colonial Hangover project, which works with students to pose a series of questions about everyday life that currently remain underrepresented in both public political discourse and the school curriculum. But we also realise that there is much more that we can and need to do.

In PAIS we take all equality, diversity, and inclusion issues extremely seriously and we are committed to exploring and understanding how anti-racist practices can be embedded throughout our curriculum and in extra-curricular activities. We wish to express our solidarity with BAME members of our community who may be experiencing acute distress at this time. We are very aware that we still have much to learn, both individually and collectively, and that there is so much more that we urgently need to do to support you, and all members of the Department to embed and operationalise increasingly robust anti-racist principles. Please work with us in order to achieve this change by contacting us if you have any specific concerns or suggestions for how we might do more.

PAIS Senior Management Team