Well, the Department of War Studies at King’s College London is huge.

Last night, I attended the departmental induction session for War Studies at KCL. I came to London and to this school knowing only that it has a stellar reputation for War Studies, so otherwise I was completely in the dark. I had no idea what my fellow students would be like or how many there would even be.

Let’s put it this way: the MA department is so massive they split it up into two induction sessions, and even then mine was filled over capacity. I estimate there are about 300-400 MA candidates in total, and that includes the specializations within the department. While I am going for an MA in War Studies, I’ve met quite a few doing International Relations, Terrorism, International Peace & Security, and Conflict Studies (one day I’ll have to figure out the precise differences between all these concentrations). It’s also quite an international crowd, as one would expect in a field such as this.

I’m a huge fan of the Kings of War blog, so it was a bit surreal to see Dr. David Betz in the flesh to introduce us to the department. While King’s College doesn’t seem to have a well-run or communicative bureaucracy (I actually applied for admission last year, but was given my acceptance so late I had to defer to this year), now that I’m here, I’m quite excited to be part of the Department of War Studies, where Andrew Exum (author of another blog I’m a huge fan of) earned his PhD last year.