Unlock the Power of Mapping: R for Politics and International Relations is a beginner-friendly course designed for master’s and PhD students who want to learn how to work with spatial data and create compelling political maps in R. Across six hands-on lessons, participants will move from the basics of installing R and RStudio to producing maps that visualize conflict, elections, economic indicators, and development patterns.
The course introduces the foundations of R programming in a practical and accessible way, with no prior coding experience required. Students will learn how to load, inspect, clean, and combine data, and then use packages such as ggplot2, sf, and terra to create maps from point, polygon, and raster data. Each lesson is tied to real political and international relations topics, helping participants see how mapping can be used to explore issues such as war and peace, voting behavior, inequality, and regional development.
By the end of the course, participants will be able to produce clear, policy-relevant maps in R and understand how to communicate spatial patterns effectively. The course concludes with a final project in which each student creates an original map illustrating a political issue of their choice, accompanied by a short written explanation and reproducible R code.
- Instructor: Milos Popovic