ICwS

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies is the only postgraduate academic institution in the United Kingdom devoted to the study of the Commonwealth.

The Institute was founded in 1949 and is part of the School of Advanced Study, University of London. The School of Advanced Study, established in 1994, brings together the specialised scholarship and resources of ten prestigious postgraduate research institutes to offer academic opportunities across and between a wide range of subject fields in the humanities and social sciences.

The Institute is the national and international centre of excellence for policy-relevant research and teaching on Commonwealth studies, focusing on North-South relations, global peace and security, development, good governance, human rights and the politics of civil society. The ICwS also offers an MA in Human Rights.

More than 150 seminars and conferences take place at ICwS each year - most are open to all and are free. Regular programmes include Caribbean Studies, Commonwealth History, Black Britain, Language Policy/Practice in the Commonwealth, South Asian Studies, Human Rights and a number of workshops and conferences.

The Library is an international resource holding more than 190,000 items, with particularly impressive Caribbean, Southern African and Australian holdings and 200 archival collections.

For more information, please visit our website at www.commonwealth.sas.ac.uk