The Arab world studies is intended to provide rigorous, research-driven, interdisciplinary, masters-level education and training. It is committed to providing a supportive learning environment that seeks to combine critical and practical reasoning so as to attain the following aims: the programme is designed to establish a cadre of exceptional researchers, qualified at the Masters level, with skills and knowledge sufficient for the conduct of research in and on the Arab World; to recruit students of high calibre who have not previously completed any substantive research training and who have few or no Arabic language skills; to provide generic training in research methods and methodologies to provide a foundation in a broad range of social science research methods as well as basic research and transferable skills that all students in the social sciences require as deemed appropriate for ESRC recognition; to provide subject-specific training in research methods and methodologies in Politics, relevant also to International Relations and International Studies; to provide language instruction in the Arabic language, such that the student develops appropriate and sufficient competence to utilise the language in their subsequent research, or employment in the Arabic-speaking world; to develop the knowledge, skills and understanding which will prepare students to undertake research for a doctoral degree in Politics, International Relations or International Studies, and which may be required of a professional researcher in these fields of the social sciences; to develop the student's knowledge of the range of existing disciplinary, multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research on the Arab world.