MA (Environment, Society and Development) University of Galway

Award	Attendance	Study	Duration	Start	Domestic fees	International fees
MA	On-Campus	Full-time	1 years	September	find out	find out

Course overview

Global issues of development, security and the environment have never been so important. The COVID-19 pandemic, the broader overstepping of ecological boundaries and the threat of climate change have brought questions of neoliberal economic production, environmental sustainability and human security to the fore. If you would you like to acquire the critical thinking and field-based learning skills that are essential in addressing these challenges, then the innovative and award-winning MA in Environment, Society and Development (MA-ESD) is for you.

The MA-ESD will engage you on a critical exploration of the various practices of development and security that define our contemporary world, and ultimately how that critique can enable more informed, participatory and transformative interventionary practices. The programme involves engagement with a number of core areas in international development, critical security studies and political ecology, and will expose you to global concerns that encompass a complex and dynamic mesh of environmental, geopolitical and economic processes. On the programme, you will gain enormously from the field experience of working on the ground in an international development context, and as a graduate you will have the ability and ambition to activate a wide range of expert critical knowledges in shaping a more sustainable world.

In embarking on your career and in following your passion for urgent global development issues, would you like to draw upon the experience of working with the United Nations and a range of NGOs in the challenging international development context of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)? A core element of the MA-ESD programme will involve you working and intersecting with communities, the UNDP and other development practitioners in BiH. You will gain vital experience of civic and community engagement in bringing critical thinking to development practice.

MA in ESD students on fieldwork in Mostar, Herzegovina.

Our students bring passion and new perspectives to urgent overlapping questions of environment, security and development. Coming from every continent across the globe, they mirror a commitment on the programme to a postcolonial concern for the production of nuanced locally-attuned knowledges that are crucial to envisioning and actioning a better world. Students benefit especially from our reputation for providing one-to-one support. The programme director and teaching team have received a number of accolades for teaching excellence, including: the University of Galway President's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2011; the National Academy Award for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning in 2012; and the University of Galway's President's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2018.

Winner: University of Galway President's Award for Teaching Excellence (2018)
Winner: Irish National Academy Award for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (2012)
Winner: University of Galway President's Award for Teaching Excellence (2011)
Winner: University of Galway Learning and Teaching Innovation Award, Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (2010)

Launch of the Neil Smith Graduate Research Award-please see here.

The Neil Smith Graduate Research Award is annually given to the best overall student on the MA. The award is designed to celebrate the legacy of the late Neil Smith, the inaugural external examiner for the programme, by encouraging graduate research in the areas of geopolitics, development and social and environmental justice.

Applications are made online via the University of Galway Postgraduate Applications System.

Assessment is in the form of continuous assessment, essays, oral presentations and other projects. Students also submit a dissertation of 15,000-20,000 words based on original research.