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Risk, Hazards and Society MSc Reading List

You are not required to study anything specific before September. However, if you want to get into the swing of things beforehand then the list below serves as an entry point for your forthcoming programme. Most of the journal articles suggested here are free to access, but you may find that others are hidden behind paywalls. If that's the case, you can often get hold of a free version of the article by looking up the author on ResearchGate or Academia.edu. And while academic books are often expensive to buy brand new, you can often find cheaper second-hand versions, or access them for free through libraries.

Suggested Reading / Listening / Viewing

  • Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society (tr. M. Ritter), London: Sage

  • Bernstein, P. (1996) Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. Wiley

  • Escobar, A. (2011) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton University Press

  • Hood, C.; Rothstein, H.; and Baldwin, R. (2004) The Government of Risk: Understanding Risk Regulation Regimes. Oxford University Press

  • Lofstedt, R. (2005) Risk Management in Post-Trust Societies. Palgrave Macmillan

  • Mustafa, D. (2013) Water Resources Management in a Vulnerable World: The Hydro-Hazardscapes of Climate Change. I.B. Tauris

  • Pelling, M. (2010) Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation. Routledge

  • Slovic, P. (2000) Perception of Risk. Earthscan

  • Wisner, B., Blaikie, P., Cannon, T. and Davis, I. (2004) At Risk: Natural Hazards, People's Vulnerability and Disasters. Routledge

You might also like to take a look at some papers published by members of the risk group.