Risk is shaping the fundamental basis for how we live and interact in society. The Masters Programmes in Risk, delivered in close collaboration with Durham University's Institute for Hazard, Risk and Resilience, encourage students to think broadly about the idea of risk, and to consider a multiplicity of topics from environmental hazards and disaster resilience to issues of security and environmental change. Its primary aim is to equip students with a general understanding of risk, whilst simultaneously providing specific training in elements of risk-related research. This will be achieved through an interdisciplinary framework that advances dialogue between multiple ways of understanding risk, from risk as an objective phenomenon managed through scientific tools (e.g. in the case of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, cyclones, floods and other environmental hazards) to risk as a social construct and a political technique (e.g. in the case of the construction of risk within geopolitics and security).

Students will learn theoretical and practical approaches to identifying and framing risk, as well as the underlying physical and social mechanisms that generate it. They will also examine the relationship of risk to knowledge and policy, and will be made aware of the array of advanced tools and techniques to assess the physical and social dimensions of risk under conditions of uncertainty.