Geography Taught Masters

MA Climate, Risk & Society

Our postgraduate courses share an interdisciplinary foundation in risk and vulnerability. Our different degree programmes deepen students’ understanding of the risks emerging from anthropogenic climate change, hazards and political responses to disruption.

Our MA in Climate, Risk and Society provides an in-depth understanding of how changes in the global climate resulting from human activity are set to pose new risks and challenges to society whether in the form of natural physical events or more indirectly through political activity.

The course explores how climate risk is perceived, managed and mitigated by individuals, organisations and governments around the world, taking a social science approach to climate change and resilience in addition to risk. This makes it as relevant to a learning background in natural sciences or engineering as it is to the social sciences.

MA Course Structure

The MA and MSc in Climate, Risk & Society provide students with an advanced understanding of anthropogenic climate change as an issue that poses new risks to society, challenges and vulnerabilities. These programmes give students tools for apprehending, interpreting and responding to the emerging natural and socio-political threats associated to climate change.

The Climate Risk and Society pathway provokes students to think critically about how evolving understandings of risk, resilience and vulnerability shape efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The pathway is available to both MA and MSc students, and its main module is ‘Climate Risk and Society’. 

MA Modules:

• EITHER Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Hazards
• OR Hydro-meteorological Hazards
• Understanding Risk
• Risk Frontiers
• Research or Vocational Dissertation Project
• Research Methods for Global Challenges
• Social Dimensions of Risk & Resilience

What our students say: Rebecca Tyrrell, MA in Risk

Be social. Be informed. Be a part of Durham Geography.