About Us

Central Department of Political Science

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Tribhuvan University

Kirtipur, Kathmandu, Nepal

The Central Department of Political Science (CDPS), with a track record of its existence since last six decades, has been serving as a focal institution for the development of political science in Nepal. As a parent and lead organization its contribution is immense in number of fields, i.e. (a) designing and periodical revision of political science syllabus at all levels (undergraduate, graduate, post-graduate, MPhil and PhD), (b) knowledge production through research, seminar and publication, (c) imparting discipline specific knowledge to post-graduate, MPhil and PhD students, and (d) formal and informal networking/collaboration with national and international research-based organizations both at individual capacity of faculty members and institutional level.

Located at Kirtipur, Kathmandu within the premise of Central Campus of Tribhuvan University, the CDPS with its competent faculty members has been providing quality education in political science discipline. It has produced hundreds of PhDs. It has earned acredit of being an institution that has produced competent manpower, i.e. scholars, leaders and policy makers, including key executive authorities.

Nevertheless, a confession is that being primarily a teaching faculty the CDPS has, since the day of its inception, mainly focused on class room activities. This means lack of a backup of research in teaching; deprivation of students to test the theoretical knowledge, they acquired in class, in the laboratory (field-work); and lack of opportunity to share knowledge of and interaction with experts due to not undertaking seminar/workshop as a part of departmental activities. But the future will be different.

The CDPS has come up with new vision (teaching to be complemented by research and interaction through workshop/seminar), mission (inclusive higher education to ensure access of marginalized groups in enterprise of knowledge production and dissemination) and goal (production of highly qualified post-graduate/MPhil/PhD students and conduct of high quality research). A journey to new destination is expected to accomplish with a number of strategic plans of actions, highlighted briefly below:

· starting of MPhil programme.

· Establishment of a research unit which looks after research projects, including publication of department’s journal.

· Revision/update of the existing curriculum – meanwhile offering total 24 courses (compulsory as well as optional) – taking into consideration of a need to product competent post-graduates/MPhil/PhDs in job market.

· Faculty development – taking into account that there are many courses beyond the capacity of generalists trained in political science –to enhance the competence of faculty members with specialization on each of 24 courses.

· For academic collaboration, it looks forward collaboration with national institutions (both GOs and NGOs) and international academic institutions.

· For fund mobilization, it actively and aggressively persuades to national institutions (i.e. National Planning Commission, UGC etc.) and international donors.

· Production of high quality post-graduates, MPhils and PhDs remains as it’s the top most priority.

· Teaching in multidisciplinary approach in collaboration which fellow departments.

· Classroom lecture, followed by filed-work and research in the form of writing and presentation of occasional paper.

The CDPS would like to welcome all stakeholders in making its academic efforts a grand success and expect their support in its uplift and making the teaching-learning-research situation more scientific.

Dr. Ishwori Prasad Kandel

Head of the Department