The Department considers it important to give its students both a thorough grounding in the academic rigors of the discipline, and at the same time adopt a hands-on approach in order that students understand and learn to function on the International circuit. To this end, the Department runs a number of courses that allow the students to conduct research in the field, participate in a Departmental radio programme on current affairs, and gain practice through simulations, in the field of diplomacy. The Department also considers it important to maintain an International profile. Consequently academic members regularly participate in international conferences and publish their research in academic journals and books.

The Department is also visited by external examiners from overseas academic institutions to ensure international standards of learning, and frequently invites practitioners and scholars both locally and from overseas to lecture on specific topics both to students and the general public. It is additionally the Department’s policy to encourage student mobility to the full through participation in Erasmus and other exchange programmes with overseas universities. In this context the Department is part of a programme that regularly runs summer schools both locally and internationally on current topics in the discipline. International Relations courses consequently tend to be popular with both local and visiting overseas students.