IR466 Half Unit
Genocide
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Prof Jens Meierhenrich
Availability
This course is available on the MSc in Gender, Peace and Security, MSc in Human Rights, MSc in Human Rights and Politics, MSc in International Affairs (LSE and Peking University), MSc in International Relations, MSc in International Relations (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in International Relations (Research), MSc in Political Science (Global Politics) and MSc in Theory and History of International Relations. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
All International Relations (IR4) optional courses at LSE are Controlled Access and require an application via LfY. Students must include a statement in their LfY application of no more than 200 words explaining their interest in the course and its relevance to their academic and career goals.
Application deadline: 12:00 noon, Friday 26 September 2025.
Notification of outcome: by 12:00 noon, Monday 29 September 2025.
After this date, students should consult the MSc Course Availability Spreadsheet for remaining spaces on IR4-level courses.
For further details, see the LSE Selecting Courses webpage in the first instance or contact IR.Programmes@lse.ac.uk only if necessary.
All students are required to obtain permission from the Teacher Responsible by completing the online application form linked to course selection on LSE for You. Admission is not guaranteed.
This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access) and demand is typically high.
Course content
This seminar course provides an introduction to the study of genocide. The course's disciplinary ambit ranges from anthropology to economics, from history to law, and from political science to sociology. Against the background of diverse disciplinary approaches, it explores major theoretical and empirical aspects of the role(s) of genocidal campaigns in international politics, inter alia, their origins, development, and termination; the manner of their perpetration, progression, and diffusion; their impact on the maintenance of international peace and security; their consequences for the reconstruction and development of states and the building of nations; and their adjudication in domestic and international courts and tribunals. Empirical cases to be discussed range from Australia toi Gaza, and from Germany to Rwanda. The course is designed to equip students with the analytic tools necessary for making sense of the evolution of the international system from the nineteenth century to the present-and for critically assessing the promise and limits of responding to collective violence.
Teaching
10 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.
Formative assessment
Students are required to research and write one formative essay (1,000 words) due in Week 7 of Winter Term. Essays must be fully - and carefully - referenced using one of the major conventions consistently.
Indicative reading
Lee Ann Fujii, Show Time: The Logic and Power of Violent Display (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021).
Christian Gerlach, The Extermination of the European Jews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
Jens Meierhenrich, Genocide: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
A. Dirk Moses, The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Diane M. Nelson, Who Counts? The Mathematics of Death and Life after Genocide (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2015).
Gérard Prunier, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
Sean R. Roberts, The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020)
William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crimes of Crimes, Second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Assessment
Essay (100%, 4000 words)
Key facts
Department: International Relations
Course Study Period: Winter Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: 47
Average class size 2024/25: 16
Controlled access 2024/25: YesCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.