Global issues of development, security and environmental sustainability have never been so important. The Covid-19 pandemic, the broader overstepping of ecological boundaries and the threat of climate change have brought questions of neoliberal economic production, environmental sustainability and human security to the fore. If you would you like to acquire the critical thinking and field-based learning skills that are essential in addressing these challenges, then the innovative and award-winning MA in Environment, Society and Development (MA-ESD) is for you.

 

Engaging vital overlapping environmental and security challenges

The MA-ESD will engage you on a critical exploration of the various practices of development and security that define our contemporary world, and ultimately how that critique can enable more informed, participatory and transformative interventionary practices. The programme involves engagement with a number of core areas in international development, critical security studies and political ecology, and will expose you to global concerns that encompass a complex and dynamic mesh of environmental, geopolitical and economic processes. On the programme, you will gain enormously from the field experience of working on the ground in an international development context, and as a graduate you will have the ability and ambition to activate a wide range of expert critical knowledges in shaping a more sustainable world.

 

Field-based learning and civic engagement

In embarking upon your career and in following your passion for addressing urgent global development issues, a core programme module ‘Field-Based Learning’ is designed to enable you to synthesise both theoretical and practical concerns in bringing critical thinking to issues of environment, society and development in the field. The module will culminate in a fieldtrip to Northern Ireland, where students will be intersecting with the work of various governmental agencies, NGOs and community development leaders and activists. The module considers how to operationalize critical knowledge of environment-society relations in the field, but also how to learn in the field by experience, through participation with both practitioners and local populations. You will gain vital experience of civic and community engagement in bringing critical thinking to development practice.