The inductive study of political science at Cambridge was pioneered in the 19th century by John Robert Seeley.

[1] In 1928, the Rockefeller Foundation endowed the university's first chair in political science, which was situated in the Faculty of History and inaugurally held by Ernest Barker.

[2][3] POLIS, formed in 2009 by the merger of the former Department of Politics and the Centre for International Studies, is administratively housed at the university's Alison Richard Building on the Sidgwick Site.

[4][5] In 2016, POLIS PhD student Giulio Regeni was killed while carrying out research in Cairo, Egypt.

[14] Its masters and doctoral programmes have been ranked among the 25 "Best International Relations Schools in the World" by Foreign Policy.