Sustainable Development MSc (online)

This module provides an overview of the politics and policies of sustainable development in different parts of the world. From increasing inequality to toxic wastes and climate change, the challenges facing our world are daunting. Arguably then, the urgency of realising transformations to sustainability has never been greater.

Module teaching team: Saurabh Arora/ Divya Sharma/ Katerina Psarikidou
Module Convenor: Dr Saurabh Arora

Assessments:

Group written submission (30%)

Essay (70%)

The mission of the module is to provide students with a grounding in a variety of economic and noneconomic (systems) frameworks for studying issues of science, technology and innovation, and their collective relationship to energy production and policy. The module gives students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds the knowledge and shared concepts for their studies, enabling them to communicate with each other and with the wider industrial, academic and policy communities concerned with innovation. The module aims to provide deep understanding of the processes of technical change and their relationships to organisations, markets and regulations.

Module teaching team: Paul Nightingale/ Joshua Moon
Module Convenors: Dr Alejandro Luna and Professor Paul Nightingale

Assessments:

Group written submission (20%)

Essay (80%)

This module will provide students with the concepts and tools to understand and analyse specific energy policy problems, identify relevant goals, develop evaluation criteria, identify alternative policy options, assess the likely impact of those options against the evaluation criteria and provide practical policy recommendations. The approach will be interdisciplinary and applied, drawing in particular upon ideas from welfare economics and public choice theory. Students will apply these ideas to contemporary challenges within energy and climate policy.

Module teaching team: Steve Sorrell/ Noam Bergman
Module Convenor: Steve Sorrell‌

Assessments:

Exam – (30%)

Report – (70%)

This module will introduce students to the nature and operation of the policy process in modern societies. The module will examine the different stages of the policy process and assess competing explanations of that process, drawing upon ideas from policy studies and political science. The aim is to provide students with an understanding of how political systems are organised in different countries, how problems are constructed and brought onto the policy agenda, how policies are formulated, adopted, implemented and evaluated, how and why changes in policy occur, and how policy processes at different levels of government interrelate. Particular attention will be paid to international cooperation between nation states and the nature, operation and importance of the institutional arrangements that result (e.g. the UNFCC and the Paris agreement). These ideas will be illustrated with practical examples and exercises from energy and other areas.

Module teaching team: Caitriona McLeish/ Alex Mankoo/ Katerina Psarikidou
Module Convenor: Dr Katerina Psarikidou

Assessments:

Project – Group Work Submission (30%)

Essay – (70%)

This module provides the epistemological foundations of development studies, mapping the historical evolution of key ideas and the political, socio-economic and cultural influences on them. It highlights the deeply contested nature of development and the different insights that academic disciplines such as economics, gender studies, anthropology, sociology, geography and political science have contributed to the evolution of development thinking. Students will reflect on their own motivation and positionality and how these influence their interpretation of the meaning and goals of development.

Module teaching team: Linda Waldman/Violet Barasa
Module Convenor: Violet Barasa

Assessments:

Report – (20%)

Peer Review – (10%)

Report – (70%)

Modern sciences and technologies are deeply entangled with social power. Techno-scientific developments such as gene editing and climate geoengineering are political issues, embroiled not only in controversies among scientists and engineers, but also subject to wider public debates. These debates highlight the importance of continuous opening up of the techno-sciences to democratic scrutiny, in order to achieve a greater diversity of knowledge, artefacts, ecologies and cultures necessary for achieving transformations to sustainability.

Module teaching team: Katerina Psarikidou/ Andrew Stirling/ Saurabh Arora
Module Convenor: Dr Katerina Psarikidou

Assessments:

Observation Activity  – Critical Reflection & Peer Review (10%)

Essay Plan – (20%)

Essay – (70%)

This module explores the central relationship between the organisation of the global political economy and processes of social and environmental change. It examines the key pillars of the global economy in terms of production, trade and finance as well as looking at the political economy of key issues such as climate change, energy, food and water. These issues are studied in terms of the economic origins of socio-ecological impacts, their governance and contestation and struggles for alternatives.

Module teaching team: Lucila Newell/ Peter Newell
Module Convenor: Dr Lucila Newell

Assessments:

Log (15%)

Group Written Submission (25%)

Essay (60%)

This module provides students with the basic building blocks for the production and use of social scientific research, giving special consideration to interdisciplinary research. The aim is to develop students’ abilities to understand, critically evaluate, conduct, and communicate research. Module contents are relevant to students interested in pursuing careers in public and private sectors, and in research. The module will help students develop more sophisticated interpretative lenses, a strong understanding of methodological approaches used in the social sciences, and effective communication abilities. These skills are highly applicable to academic and non-academic tasks.

Module teaching team: Marie Claire Brisbois/ Katerina Psarikidou
Module Convenors: Dr Sung Kyu Kim and Dr Alejandro Luna

Assessments:

Project (40%)

Report (60%)

This module will explore the role that innovation can play in sustainable development in industrialised and developing countries. A number of ideas will be used to provide a framework for experiential learning, including: include past and current theory on sustainability, growth and competitiveness (with specific reference to the role of technology); understanding and influencing directions of innovation – both in terms of green industrialisation and grassroots innovation; and the governance of socio-technical transitions. Specific topics will be explored to illustrate the utility of each idea, such as: the barriers to the diffusion of sustainable innovations; the role of innovative green niches in systems transformations; and the challenges of international co-ordination and regulation within the multilateral trading system. These topics will be illustrated with reference to real world case studies in a number of different sectors.

Module lead: Adrian Ely

Assessments:

Essay (20%)

Essay (80%)

This module examines the emergent place and problems of market-based approaches for achieving sustainability and will cover topics such as payments for ecosystem services, carbon and biodiversity markets, offsetting and banking, and no net loss approaches. It probes questions of equity, justice and efficacy in treating nature as ‘capital’ and financialised commodity.

This module is offered jointly with the School of Global Studies.

Module teaching team: Lucila Newell/ James Fairhead
Module Convenor: Dr Lucila Newell

Assessments:

Group Work Submission (30%)

Essay  (70%)

This module examines the ways in which the current development apparatus is rooted in colonial history and ways of knowing, and how the politics and practices of sustainability both reinforce and challenge coloniality. We will explore non-Eurocentric forms of knowledge production focussing on the global South (such as feminist and critical race theory and practices, environmental and indigenous movements) that critique coloniality, rework the meaning of sustainability and offer visions for socio-ecologically just transformations.

Module teaching team: Divya Sharma / Saurabh Arora

Assessments:

Presentations (30%)

Essay (70%)

This module examines key policy issues and debates relating to sustainability and global development in the domains of agriculture, health and the environment. A case study approach is used to explore real-life policy dilemmas, through topics such as agricultural transformation, carbon politics, the commodification of nature, the governance of infectious diseases, resource extraction, and climate change.

This module is offered jointly with the Institute of Development Studies.

Module lead: Dominic Glover
Module Convenor: Violet Barasa

Assessments:

Report (30%)

Essay (70%)

This module provides the student with knowledge and understanding on how sustainability principles are embedded in business processes, products and services by exploring real world case studies in different sectors. The module introduces a variety of frameworks and operational practices to develop a deep understanding of how the fundamental principles of sustainability can support the improvement of operations and supply chains, including product design, manufacturing, and logistics.

Module lead: Maria Holgado
Module Convenor: Professor Madeleine (Mellie) Pullman

Assessments: 

Essay – (30%)

Report – (70%)