Use this guide to discover useful resources for conducting Politics research.
The University of Sussex's Library Search is a good starting point, as it spans all subjects and searches the university's collections and subscriptions. However, to be more comprehensive in your research, you’ll need to use other databases and collections to find resources.
This guide provides a list of places to search for politics-related material, including academic sources like books and journal articles, UK government documents, statistics, news and historical sources. For even more useful resources, try checking the listings of other relevant subject guides.
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A multidisciplinary abstract and citation database of academic journal articles, books and conference proceedings covering all subjects, dating back to 1900. Web of Science consists of multiple different databases including the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. Features: citation analysis, researcher profiles, journal metrics, search alerts.
Scopus is a multidisciplinary abstract and citation database, which provides access to academic journals, books, conference proceedings, and patents from 1788–present.
Advanced Features: citation analysis, author profiles, journal metrics; data export and analysis, search alerts.
An online database that contains over six million bibliographic references. Dating back to 1951, these references include journal articles, books, newspapers, and dissertations. The subjects covered range from anthropology and economics to politics and sociology. Interdisciplinary subjects such as development studies, human geography, and gender studies are also included.
Digitised and fully searchable records of the British Cabinet from 1915-78. Contains papers, precedent books, and notebooks, including minutes, memoranda, and conclusions from meetings. Divided into three themes: ‘The United Kingdom and the World,’ ‘The Economy, Business, and Resources,’ and ‘Society and the Welfare State.’
Full-text access to House of Commons papers from 1715–present, including bills, command papers, committee reports, statistical accounts, and government papers. Covers British policy, social reform, trade, and international affairs.
Provides access to the bills brought forward in the UK's House of Lords throughout the twentieth century.
Access to UK House of Lords Parliamentary Papers. Encompasses social, political, economic and foreign policy, providing evidence of committees and commissions during a time when the Lords in the United Kingdom wielded considerable power.
An online database providing access to treaties and international agreements registered or filed with the United Nations since 1946. Includes full texts, status information, and related documents. Covers a wide range of subjects including human rights, environmental law, disarmament, trade, and international criminal law.
A digital collection of over 250 scholarly books on political ideas, institutions, and movements from the 20th century to today. Topics include governance, foreign policy, gender, environmental politics, peace studies, and security. Covers political developments across Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Collection of over 50,000 ebooks on Law and Social and Political Science published by Edward Elgar, including handbooks, encyclopedias, research reviews and legal commentaries.
Access to the UK Census, a nationwide survey conducted every ten years by the Office for National Statistics. It collects demographic, social, and economic data about people and households in England and Wales.
A global data and business intelligence platform offering statistics on 80,000+ topics across 170 industries, with international coverage. Content is drawn from market research, government, and industry sources, and presented in user-friendly tables, charts, and graphs.
A comprehensive news database offering full-text access to UK national and regional newspapers, international news sources, trade journals, magazines, and company reports. Coverage includes titles like The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, and The Observer, with daily updates and global scope.
Access to the independent, not-for-profit, online newspaper established in 2000, covering EU affairs in all member states.
American periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals. Combines collections from American Periodicals Series Online (APS Online) and American Periodicals from the Center for Research (APCRL).
Digitised archive of 15 major magazines from 1918–2015, including Newsweek, covering politics, public policy, international relations, and current events. Offers full-colour, cover-to-cover scans of these US and European publications.
A digital archive of alternative press publications produced in the United States during the 20th century. Provides full-text access to magazines, newspapers, and journals created by feminist, LGBTQ+, African American, Native American, Lationo, GI, Campus Underground, Right-Wing and other activist and independent communities.
Covers developments in journalism from the early 20th century onward, including investigative reporting, war coverage, and the impact of technology. Features first-hand accounts, memoirs, archival records, and video materials exploring media practices and ethics.
A collection of primary and secondary sources which explore and provide historical background on worldwide border areas, including: U.S. and Mexico; the European Union; Afghanistan; Israel; Turkey; The Congo; Argentina; China; Thailand; and more. The collection, which spans the 19th to the 21st century, is organized by key themes associated with border and migration issues.
A database of primary source documents from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, integrating two archives: ‘Privy Council and related bodies: America and West Indies, Colonial Papers’ and ‘The Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: North America and the West Indies 1574-1739.’ The collections relate to the British governance of early settlements, encounters with Native Americans, piracy, the slave trade, and conflicts with the Spanish and French.
Documents from the Communist Party of Great Britain’s International Department, covering global communist movements and ideological divisions from 1944 to 1986. Focuses on the Sino-Soviet split, Eastern Europe, anti-colonial struggles, and Western leftist responses during the Cold War.
A collection of John Thomas (J.T.) Murphy and Molly Murphy’s personal and political papers, covering his imprisonment in 1925, his campaign to become a Member of Parliament, and his travels in post-revolutionary Russia. It also includes documents detailing Molly’s time as a suffragette, nursing on the frontlines of the Spanish Civil War and her time in the Soviet Union. Together, these materials provide insight into the internal debates occupying the British and European left during the 1920s and 1930s.
An online collection of more than 100,000 declassified records documenting historic U.S. foreign and military policy decisions since 1945.
Contains thousands of U.K. government documents relating to Britain’s international relations, including foreign policy instructions, letters and memos, business reports. Brings together three digitised print collections:
A curated collection documenting the history and current status of incarceration in the United States and globally. Details the prison infrastructure of specific countries. Includes court cases, first-hand accounts, legal and government documents, training materials, videos, and articles, from the mid 1900s onwards, covering topics like the death penalty, juvenile detention, internment camps, prison labour, re-entry, and prison culture.
Documents everyday life in Britain from 1937 to the mid-1960s through diaries, surveys, reports, and publications created by investigators and volunteer writers. Covers topics such as wartime experiences, consumer habits, media, gender roles, and social attitudes. Includes personal diaries, directive responses, thematic studies, file reports, and publications.
Archive of The Nation magazine from 1865 to the present, offering primary source material on U.S. and global politics, culture, and society. Includes articles, editorials, letters, reviews, poems, and puzzles.
Provides access to two collections: British Politics and Society and European Literature and the Corvey Collection. Includes primary sources on 19th-century British political reform, industrialisation, and social change, alongside over 9,000 Romantic-era literary works (1790–1840) in English, French, and German, with a focus on representing women writers.
A curated collection of primary and secondary sources exploring major global security events from the 20th and 21st centuries. Includes personal accounts, government documents, press releases, photographs, news footage, documentaries, scholarly essays, maps, and chronologies. Topics include Cold War crises, intelligence operations, cyber security, and international conflict.
Verbatim transcripts from the 1961 High Court case exposing Communist Party influence in the Electrical Trades Union. Offers rare insight into post-war trade union politics, with contextual essays by historian Kevin Morgan.
A collection of primary documents, scholarly essays, and reviews exploring the history of women’s activism in the United States from the colonial era to the present. Covers topics such as abolition, suffrage, labour, civil rights, and feminism. Includes writings by and about women, as well as records of grassroots and national organisations.
A streaming service for UK higher education, containing a searchable archive of over 2 million TV and radio broadcasts dating back to the 1990s. New broadcasts added daily. Record from 75+ channels, create clips, search transcripts, compile playlists and more. Not available to users outside the UK.
You will need to select log in via UK Federation, then select University of Sussex from the dropdown list. (New users will need to register their Sussex email address.)
A collection of over 600 videos in Education and Politics & International Relations. Includes case studies, tutorials, interviews, documentaries, and more to support teaching and research.