A new and innovative interdisciplinary program. Financial aid and funding offered. A lens-worthy location. The reasons students choose the UC Irvine School of Social Sciences for their graduate pursuits are many.

Launched with its first class of students in 2020, the UCI graduate program in global studies offers students six years of funding at a top ten public university.

UCI global studies is a fast growing, new interdisciplinary program that engages some of the most important issues of our times. Since 2017, the Department of Global and International Studies at UCI has grown its faculty count to 12 professors strong with research interests spanning the globe on topics from transnational law, global political economy, climate change, migration crises, global indigeneity, racial capitalism, media, ideology, health, gender, and sexuality.

Each year, the department hosts a mentoring conference that pairs graduate students and young career faculty from institutions around the world with established UC scholars who in turn advise on research strategies for publishing and new methods for teaching in a global era.

And graduate students in the department have ample opportunity to publish alongside prolific professors in top ranked journals.

 
Only the second such program within the University of California system, the new Ph.D. program in global studies at UCI provides a critical transdisciplinary degree that stands out from other programs for its cutting-edge curriculum, diverse faculty, and embracing of scholarship from across the social sciences and humanities engaging multiple theoretical perspectives and methodologies.

Global studies is a fast-growing field of inquiry dedicated to understanding pressing global issues such as conflict, inequality, migration, human rights, climate change, health, racial formations, global cultures, diasporas, and development from an interdisciplinary perspective. Global scholars analyze the social, cultural, political, environmental, legal, and economic consequences of these issues, understanding them as multidimensional, multi-level, and historical processes.

Developed with the inclusive aspirations of a liberal education, the department decolonizes western assumptions that prioritize American and European values. Global studies explains concepts - such as democracy - from local perspectives where the idea can take on vastly different meanings. This foundation gives students a more nuanced understanding of taken-for-granted ideas such as justice, human rights, and development and helps open their imagination to thinking globally.

And if that wasn’t enough, the UCI campus is located less than 10 miles from Newport Beach, is the #1 university doing the most for the American dream (New York Times College Access Index), and a top 10 best value university (Princeton Review).