Program Overview

The Bachelor of Arts is the ultimate, flexible university degree, and you can tailor it to explore your interests and discover a wide range of career possibilities. It is an opportunity to pursue what you loved in high school or branch out into areas you've never had the opportunity to explore.

Our students embrace the joy of open enquiry, are curious about life’s big questions, and are on a life-long quest for knowledge and inspiration. You will hone skills like critical-thinking, research, and inter-cultural awareness under the guidance of passionate academics who are leading researchers in their fields.

You can take on cultural, environmental, and humanitarian challenges from multiple perspectives and gain the confidence to make a positive difference. Through our close relationships with government and industry partners, we will prepare you to start your career with the skills employers want.

Major: Politics, Policy and International Relations

The Politics, Policy and International Relations (PIR) Major at the University of Tasmania offers students a structured pathway to gain knowledge, gather evidence and evaluate solutions to the major local, national, and international issues of our time. The PIR major develops three core skills students need to be effective agents of change in today's turbulent world: theoretically informed and evidence-based thinking; multi-methods research capacity; and policy analysis skills transferable across different disciplinary, spatial, and temporal contexts. In their final year, students apply these skills in undertaking independent research, project activities, and internships in areas of professional and personal interest. Graduates of the PIR major position themselves for roles in policy analysis, program evaluation, and research leading to leadership roles in the public service, and private and civil society sectors.

The PIR major offers units on foundational and contemporary political and international issues, concepts, theory and ideologies coupled with applied, real-world, case studies. Students grapple with the major political forces shaping their lives including war and peace, democracy and authoritarianism, genocide and justice. The PIR major empowers students to understand the deep divisions societies encounter in an era of political polarisation fanned by GenAI and social media, enabling the sober evaluation of policy solutions that generate more just, equitable, and sustainable communities into the future.