MSc Climate, Risk and Society
Description
Our Climate, Risk and Society MSc draws primarily on a natural science approach to risk and enables you to engage with the natural and social dimensions of climate change.
The programme gives you a thorough grounding in the theoretical and practical approaches to identifying, understanding, framing, assessing and managing risk; and the underlying physical and social mechanisms that generate it.
Module content, methods training, and research projects emphasise how climate change affects the physical environment.
Who is the programme aimed at?
The programme is aimed at anyone interested in how climate risk is understood, managed and mitigated by individuals, organisations and government. We will explore climate change’s spatial and temporal impacts on society.
You will learn interdisciplinary approaches to climate-related risks from the physical and social sciences and develop your expertise in climate risk through independent coursework in physical hazards, risk and resilience. The MSc offers additional training in natural science methods.
The programme is relevant and accessible to students varied backgrounds including social science, natural science and engineering.
Employment opportunities
Employers of our Risk Masters students are particularly keen on the foundational, interdisciplinary understanding of risk and the specific critical and / or practical analysis skills related to climate change.
Upon completion of the programme, our students have taken up employment within sectors such as:
- Environmental consultancy
- Risk and resilience government agencies
- Insurance and re-insurance
- Catastrophe modelling
- Infrastructure security
- Non-profits, humanitarian organisations and charities
- Technology firms
- Public services and the private sector.
What is the course about?
Understanding and managing risk is ultimately about choice. All elements of society, from individuals to governments, must make decisions – conscious or not – about the ways in which they perceive, interpret, balance, and mitigate risk and uncertainty.
Our MSc in Climate, Risk and Society equips you with an advanced understanding of how anthropogenic climate change poses new risks, challenges and vulnerabilities to society.
You will develop tools for comprehending, interpreting and responding to the emerging natural and socio-political threats associated with climate change.
You will also learn to think critically about how evolving understandings of climate risk, resilience and vulnerability shape efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
What is special about this course?
The MSc in Climate, Risk and Society is part of a suite of masters programmes in the Department of Geography.
These programmes draw together a diverse range of students in core modules, forming a vibrant Taught Postgraduate community.
Core modules provide foundational content and training, drawing on social and physical science approaches to risk. This interdisciplinary training makes our students uniquely qualified to tackle complex problems when they enter the workplace.
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Study Climate, Risk and Society within an interdisciplinary framework
You will study core and optional modules, grounding your learning in social and physical sciences, an interdisciplinarity highly valued by employers.
We also collaborate closely with Durham University’s Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience (IHRR), enabling you to gain exposure to practitioner and academic perspectives at the forefront of risk thinking and practice. IHRR hosts an annual seminar series tailored to students on our climate risk postgraduate programmes.
You will receive specialised training in science and social-science based elements of risk-related research and practice whilst gaining a general understanding of risk. You will examine the relationship between climate risk, knowledge and policy and learn about the array of advanced tools and techniques to assess the physical and social dimensions of climate risk under conditions of uncertainty.