King's College London

Managing risk and hazards has become a core task of governments, businesses, and wider societal organisations across the globe as they seek to anticipate and respond to both old and new potential harms to human health, safety, security, and the environment. This task is inevitably multi-faceted, creating a need for interdisciplinary specialists who can understand how the key technical, organisational, and societal dimensions of each problem fit together.

This Risk, Hazards and Society MSc answers this need by equipping you with the knowledge and skills to critically analyse risk and hazard problems from a unique combination of disciplinary perspectives – from psychology, political science and sociology to development and physical geography – as well as develop reflexive problem-solving strategies across a wide range of societal, public, and private sector contexts. You’ll use these perspectives to better understand the problem-solving strategies of governments and businesses across the globe, how their philosophies and practices vary, and why they sometimes fail.

You’ll graduate with a competitive range of skills and knowledge highly desired by organisations that need help navigating and responding to the increasingly complex world of risk and hazards.

Taught by world-leading experts based in the Department of Geography’s Risk, Hazards and Society research group, you’ll learn about the political, organisational, and societal contexts that shape vulnerabilities to risks and hazards as well as their management, governance, and public communication.

You’ll begin your Risk, Hazards and Society MSc with a required module that examines the fundamentals of this field of study. You’ll learn how experts analyse different dimensions of risk and hazard problems from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. You’ll cover a wide range of topics, such as risk and insurance, risk perception and communication, risk management and risk governance, risk quantification, disaster, vulnerability and resilience, and social theories of risk and blame.

The rest of your syllabus for this MSc in risk, hazards and society will be shaped by your selection of six optional modules, at least four of which should come from a prescribed list of specialist options specific to this programme. For example, you might choose to learn about the public’s perception of risk and how organisations communicate risk in order to influence behaviour change, or study the interplay of vulnerability, development and disasters to evaluate hazardous environments throughout the world.

You could also choose to study the key theories and practices of the management and governance of risks to human health, safety and security, or learn more about diverse approaches to risk assessment in different contexts, from climate change to supply chains. You will also take a required social research methods module, which will strengthen your research skills and help you design and undertake your own independent research project for your dissertation.

This programme also gives you the chance to connect scholarship and practice. Our optional internship module gives you the chance to learn from professionals across more than 100 public, private and third sector organisations in the UK and abroad who are grappling with just the kind of issues that you will have learnt about in your taught modules. Graduates report that this internship module has given them a significant advantage when competing in the job market.