In 2025, Loughborough University launched its postgraduate master’s in law (LLM) at Loughborough London, the first programme offered by its new Law Department, which will welcome its first undergraduates at the East Midlands campus in autumn 2026. For the Institute for Diplomacy and International Affairs (IDIA), this has given our students access to some of the university’s new world-class law lecturers and their courses.

Over the past year, IDIA students have taken law modules, and LLM students have had access to IDIA modules, showing just how naturally law and diplomacy complement one another. We’re expanding the modules IDIA students can take from 2026-27, depending on their IDIA degree.

What’s on offer

IDIA students can pick modules that span trade, investment, sustainability, sport, human rights, and technology. World Trade Law and Foreign Investment Law give students a grounding in the legal architecture behind global economic relations. Trade Law and Sustainability extends that into environmental, developmental and labour justice questions. Sports, Law and Global Business looks at how company, commercial and financial law shape the global sports industry, a natural complement for students of the Diplomacy and Sport MSc. International Human Rights Law and Social Justice, and Technology, Law and Social Justice, bring legal frameworks to bear on two of the areas IDIA students already spend a lot of time thinking about: rights and power, and the effects of technology on global order. More information about these modules and Loughborough Law’s distinctive approach towards national, transnational and international law and regulation in the context of its focus on social and global justice can be found here.

For IDIA students, the benefits are clear. Diplomacy and international relations rarely operate outside of legal frameworks, and these modules give students the tools to understand how law enables, restricts, or is contested in the areas they study. A student interested in trade diplomacy now has the chance to study the law that underpins it. A student researching human rights advocacy can pair that with a module examining the legal principles and institutions involved. The traffic runs the other way, too, because LLM students who opt to study modules like Diplomacy in the Digital World, Negotiation, or International Relations and Security in the Age of Polycrises gain a broader sense of the politics and diplomacy their legal training will operate in.

A bigger Loughborough London

The new Law team and their courses bring a body of internationally recognised legal expertise and research to Loughborough London. That helps IDIA strengthen the cross-disciplinary teaching and research required for studying and working in international affairs, and it strengthens Loughborough London’s position as a place offering an immersive interdisciplinary experience for globally minded postgraduate study.