Why study this course?
As this pathway is situated within the Global Sustainable Development MSc, you will share in exploring the tensions and synergies between different theories and approaches to sustainable development. You will engage with sustainable development policy and practice on different scales (local, national, and international), and consider alternative frameworks and trajectories.
Coursework components will help you to develop and demonstrate writing and analysis skills for different audiences. Beyond that, this named pathway critically interrogates the role of power, inequalities and social justice in sustainable development, exploring how environments, resources and livelihoods both shape and are shaped by practices of development.
Drawing on critical traditions including feminist, decolonial, queer scholarship and political ecology, students examine how concepts of development contribute to the production and reproduction of racial, gendered, and colonial violence and injustice and explore how these can be challenged to bring about more just and decolonised futures.
Highlights
- Introduces different conceptualisations of sustainability and enables students to navigate an urgent and contested field.
- Rooted in critical interdisciplinary social science, this course addresses social and political responses to climate science and offers a remarkable richness and depth compared with conventional single-subject degrees.
- Alongside critical analysis, this pathway foregrounds creativity, activism, and participatory and decolonial approaches to both research and practice.
- This pathway is linked to the Geographies of Societies, Solidarities, Inequalities and Possibilities (GOSSIP) Research Group, enabling students to engage with a range of active research from within the School and further afield through the group’s discussions and seminars.
The other potential pathways available are:
Modules
You must take the two compulsory taught modules required of all MSc GSD students:
- Interrogating Sustainable Development, in Semester 1.
- Sustainable development: from principles to practice, in Semester 2.
In addition to this, you must take Capitalism, Development and Environment and will complete your end of degree project with a supervisor from the GOSSIP Research Group.
Alongside compulsory modules, you will complete one additional optional module (one per semester), allowing you to further shape the degree around your own personal and professional interests.
Dissertation
If you choose not to complete the dissertation requirement for the MSc, there is an exit award available that allows suitably qualified candidates to receive a Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip) instead, finishing the course at the end of the second semester of study.
Course information may change. Module information and course content, teaching and assessment may change each year and after you have accepted your offer to study at the University of St Andrews. We display the most up-to-date information possible, but this could be from a previous academic year. For the latest module information, see the module catalogue.
- Interrogating Sustainable Development: introduces the origins of the concept, as well as its key critiques and alternatives, using ‘development’ as a broad entry point to a famously vague term. This provides solid theoretical foundations enabling you to identify and critically analyse different approaches to sustainability.
- Sustainable Development: From Principles to Practice: examines how doing sustainable development research with non-academic partners challenges us to engage with sustainability as an academic, policy and practical concern. We consider how inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to sustainable development stimulate learning and innovation to address socio-environmental inequalities and vulnerabilities.
- Capitalism, Development and Environment: considers histories, theories and practices of development and its interrelationship with the environment and capitalism.
- End of degree project: takes the form of a period of supervised research where you will explore a topic in depth. The project topic must be agreed by the student, supervisor, and module coordinator. Students can choose to complete the end of degree project as a Dissertation, Policy Report or Portfolio Project.
- Environmental Conservation and Management: introduces concepts of environmental conservation and management and explores their implementation via different contexts and case studies.
- Health, Inequality and Development: examines how social, economic, political and environmental conditions interact to affect people’s opportunities to live secure, healthy and meaningful lives.
- Energy Inequalities and Climate Responsibilities: introduces energy ethics through an analytical approach that investigates how energy practices are informed by our individual and collective understandings of ethics.
- Energy and Climate Change Policy: focuses on the key issues in energy finance and energy policy, focusing on contemporary UK within a global comparative perspective.
- Coasts and Seas: Conservation and Planning for Sustainable Futures: explores insights from planning, environmental geography, political science and other social science disciplines, drawing on examples predominantly from the marine and coastal environment.
- Communication and Visualization for Sustainable Development: explores the science behind effective communication through data visualization and the theories underpinning effective science communication and public engagement activities.
- Coordinating a Humanitarian Disaster Response: explores how a humanitarian response is coordinated in practice, and how effective assessment and analysis of humanitarian data underlies most if not all decision-making in a coordinated humanitarian response
- Extractive Environments: introduces SD honours students to resource extraction, as a conflictive arena for determining trajectories of sustainability and as inextricably tied to dynamics of colonialism, knowledge, development and citizenship
- Green Politics: Theory and Practice: explores the theory and practice of environmental politics in issues of Sustainable Development.
- Migration and Sustainable Development: Displacement, policy and lived realities: explores the relationship between migration and a broad range of SD goals (including poverty, education, gender and work).
- The Nature of Political Ecology: offers an introduction to political ecology - the study of the relationships and interactions between political-economic structures and ecological systems - and asks what it might teach us about the current climatic and ecological crises.
- Valuing Environments: introduces students to conceptual and political challenges around valuing environments.
- Coastal Processes and Blue Carbon: aims to enhance students’ understanding of coastal processes and management, with particular reference to the science and conservation of blue carbon stores.
Teaching
Delivered through seminars, workshops, lectures, fieldwork, tutorials, and independent study.
Assessment
May include a mix of essays, reports, policy briefs, presentations, practical exercises, reflective exercises, and exams.
What other students say
"Study at St Andrews has given me the opportunity to deepen my understanding of the principles and fundamentals of sustainability within a robust and engaging academic environment. The interdisciplinary nature of the programme stands out, covering a wide range of topics from global development theories to sustainability policies, and equipping students with a robust foundation in environmental, social and economic sustainability management."
- Priscilla (Ghana)
Further study
St Andrews offers a vibrant and stimulating research environment. One of the great strengths of a St Andrews research degree is the collegiate atmosphere which enables access to expertise beyond your formal supervisors and the ability to conduct interdisciplinary research.
Research students are supported by a supervisory team throughout their studies and are assessed by means of a substantial thesis of original research.