M.A. in Risk, Durham University

Understanding and managing risk is ultimately about choice. All elements of society, from individuals to governments, must make decisions – conscious or not – about the ways in which they perceive, interpret, balance, and mitigate risk. Risk permeates our day-to-day lives in ways that are now recognised to be much more complex than the hazard-vulnerability paradigm, which dominated risk research until the 1990s, recognised. A deeper understanding of the nature of risk, its emergence, and its interface and position within societies, has emphasised the need to take a much more complex view in which a general understanding of the ways in which risk is generated, experienced and managed needs to be combined with a specific understanding of particular science or policy areas.;The primary aim of this Masters is to equip you with a general understanding of risk and resilience, whilst simultaneously providing specific training in elements of risk-related research. The MA supports you in developing a strong social science perspective on risk, while also maintaining an interdisciplinary outlook. You will learn theoretical and practical approaches to identifying and framing risk, as well as the underlying physical and social mechanisms that generate it. You will also examine the relationship of risk to knowledge and policy, and made aware of the array of advanced tools and techniques to assess the physical and social dimensions of risk under conditions of uncertainty.;Get more details;Visit official programme website