The Fellow in Politics is Giovanni Capoccia, Professor of Comparative Politics in the Department of Politics and IR. His teaching concentrates in the area of comparative politics, political sociology, and European politics. He has published extensively on democratization, democracy and political extremism, political institutions, and twentieth-century European politics. Dr Scot Peterson is a College Lecturer in Politics. In College, he teaches comparative politics, with a special emphasis on the politics of the US and the UK. His research is in the area of constitutional history, public law, and politics and religion. A number of non-stipendiary lecturers who have taught Corpus Students for several years also teach Politics in College.
In the first year, Politics students take tutorials on basic concepts of comparative politics and political theory. In their second year, students choose two "core" courses (called "papers" in the Oxford jargon) from a list of five including Theory of Politics, Comparative Government, Political Sociology, International Relations, and British Politics and Government since 1900. The core papers are then complemented by a number of optional papers (generally two) chosen from a long list of options, and by some revision classes offered in the course of the third year. There is also the possibility to substitute one of the option papers with a supervised honours thesis.