Anthropogenic climate change is disrupting global environmental processes, creating intersecting environmental crises that affect both human and non-human life. These challenges include: increased frequency and magnitude of hazardous events such as landslides, floods and droughts; land degradation; melting of polar/mountain glaciers, ice caps and permafrost; and rising sea levels.
This MSc responds to the question of how we can address these challenges in order to develop sustainable futures. The programme brings together state-of-the-art research in environmental processes across diverse systems from polar regions to deserts under changing climates, and advanced approaches to data acquisition, analysis and interpretation. On this programme, you will develop a detailed understanding of the relations and feedbacks between climate change and environmental processes. You will gain advanced-level skills of data collection, analysis, and interpretation needed for decision making under conditions of uncertainty and incomplete data. You will also gain experience of working with partners, alongside the leadership and engagement and communication skills necessary to help you contribute to global efforts to enhance environmental sustainability.
The course is designed to equip students for a wide range of environmental sustainability related jobs across multiple sectors and in different national contexts. Students will exit the programme understanding the impact of anthropogenic climate change on environmental processes at different scales, and equipped with the skills to research, evaluate, propose and lead solutions that foster environmental sustainability.
Topics covered include investigating the causes of climate change and a range of other complex global crises, how environmental processes respond under different climate states and predicting future behaviour of environmental systems. The modules will also develop advanced data analysis skills, practical skills of leadership, engagement and dissemination and allow students to design and execute an extended piece of research on a particular problem.
Course structure
Year 1 modules
Core modules:
Sustainable Futures (30 credits)
The module introduces the causes of climate change and a range of other complex global crises, and explores emerging solutions around the promise of ‘sustainable futures’, building from the Sustainable Development Goals.
Environmental Data Science (30 credits)
This module will develop advanced data analysis skills such as programming, modelling and GIS, using datasets that allow advanced insight to a range of environmental processes as well as experience in a range of data sources.
Climate and Environmental Change Past and Present (15 credits)
This module will assess how different paleo-environmental records are produced and analysed, and how they can be interpreted to make future predictions that enhance sustainability. It involves fieldwork, as well as lectures and seminars.
Anticipating Future Environments (15 credits)
This module will consider how we can predict the future behaviour of a range of different environmental systems under conditions of uncertainty, synthesising the state of the art and critically analysing current knowledge to enhance sustainability.
Knowledge for Action and Leadership (15 credits)
The module develops practical skills of leadership, engagement and dissemination relevant to creating sustainable futures.
Dissertation or Vocational Dissertation (60 credits)
The dissertation allows students to design and execute an extended piece of research on a particular problem, challenge, or issue at the intersection of climate change, environmental processes, and questions of sustainability. The vocational dissertation option is based on working with a non-academic partner.
Optional modules:
Climate Change and Society (15 credits)
The module will expand students’ comprehension of the diverse societal processes underpinning climate change and its impacts in particular places across the globe.
Cities and Climate Change (15 credits)
The module explores how the very nature of urbanization is profoundly connected to the challenges of sustainability and responding to climate change.
Social Dimensions of Risk and Resilience (15 credits)
The module focuses on the social dimensions of risk and resilience with a particular emphasis on environmental hazards and climate change.
Environmental Impact Assessment and Management (from Earth Sciences, 15 credits)
This module aims to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and its role in sustainable development.
Our Masters programmes combine participatory and interactive approaches to learning, ranging from in-class activities to invited lectures from practitioners to challenge-driven collaborative projects. We are particularly keen to work with students individually to develop their learning. Throughout your study, you will be supported by an academic advisor and then a dissertation supervisor.
You will receive approximately eight hours of module contact per week during Terms 1 and 2; however, this amount can vary week to week. Teaching is delivered using a combination of lectures, seminars, tutorials, workshops and local and residential fieldtrips. In total, for full-time study, you will be expected to devote around eight hours per day of study hours during term time, including all assessments.
Assessment
Summative assessments include marked assignments, such as reports, presentations or essays, as well as other forms of assessment designed to develop transferable skills, such as a presentations, policy briefs and executive summaries. Summative assessments are supported by ‘practice’ formative assessments that give students the opportunity to receive feedback. Over Term 3 and the summer, you will carry out your dissertation, under the guidance of a supervisor (and partner if choosing the ‘vocational dissertation’ route).
Entry requirements
An upper second class degree in any degree, or equivalent international qualification.
A personal statement should describe your interest in Cities and Sustainable Futures and any relevant experience or study.
International students who do not meet direct entry requirements for this degree might have the option to complete an International Foundation Year.
Home students who do not meet our direct entry requirements, may be eligible for our Foundation Programme which offers multidisciplinary programmes to prepare you for a range of specified degree programmes.
The fees for this academic year have not been confirmed yet.
The tuition fees shown are for one complete academic year of study and are set according to the academic year of entry. Fees will be subject to an annual inflationary increase and are expected to rise throughout the programme of study. The fee listed above is for the first year of the course only.
Studying in a department with a global reputation for the quality of research, our postgraduates are well placed to continue research at a higher level or progress into a rewarding professional career.
Taught courses are designed to develop the transferable skills that are highly sought after by employers such as the ability to analyse and communicate complex data and make decisions, and our postgraduates are much valued in areas such as government, non-governmental organisations and the charity sector.
Other roles in which postgraduates make a real difference to people and communities include environmental consultancy, conservation, town planning, geopolitical risk analysis, market research, insurance, development work, health, public policy, social research, logistics, education, energy, utilities, tourism, banking, law, PR, IT.
Department information
Geography
Geography at Durham explores the very real challenges facing the world, be they natural or a consequence of human activity. Through teaching and research in risk, climate change, sustainable futures, hazards and security, we provide in-depth insight into these problems and how they might be resolved using practical and sustainable solutions.
The Department of Geography is a global academic centre for the study of physical and human geography. Our high-quality research and our industry connections combine to create a learning experience underpinned by the theory and practice to take on the challenges we face as a result of natural events and human activity.
We provide a leading-edge environment in which to study, giving a learning experience that is tailored to suit particular interests. We offer two suites of Masters programmes:
The courses on the Sustainable Futures route respond to the profound challenge of developing ‘sustainable futures’ in the midst of climate change, by understanding relations between climate change, cities, environmental processes and society, and on exploring and evaluating emergent sustainable solutions at different scales.
The courses on the Risk route provide a thorough grounding in theoretical and practical approaches to identifying, understanding, framing, assessing and managing different aspects of risk.
Our academic staff are experts in their field with research activity in the Department divided into seven clusters comprising Politics-State-Space, Economy and Culture, Urban Worlds, Geographies of Life as well as Sea Level, Ice and Climate, Catchments and Rivers, and Hazards and Surface Change.
The postgraduate community plays a crucial role in contributing to the Department’s research goals, by conducting original research and by learning from research-led teaching about understanding and implementing the process of turning policy into practice. An in-house conference provides the opportunity for postgraduates to present ideas.
The Department of Geography is located on the main campus of Durham University at Lower Mountjoy, not far from the historic centre of the city with UNESCO World Heritage status.
Apply
Find out more:
Apply for a postgraduate course (including PGCE International) via our online portal.
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