Environmental Humanities

Entry requirements

A 2.1 (or overseas equivalent) degree in any discipline with a strong essay component.

A 500-word personal statement which should include the following:

• An outline of your interest in an interdisciplinary MA in Environmental Humanities
• What skills and knowledge you would bring to the course
• What skills and knowledge you would hope to acquire on the programme
• An indication of an area you might like to research in your dissertation
• If your background is not in the humanities, please provide experience in essay writing and research

Months of entry

September

Course content

The MA in Environmental Humanities explores how research in the study of the humanities disciplines can be applied to make a difference and boost the effectiveness of our response to the ever-growing global environmental crisis.

The course takes up elements from modules in departments including Anthropology, English Studies, Geography, History, Modern Languages and Cultures, Philosophy, and Theology and Religion to provide you with a firm grounding for either carrying out further research at a higher level or making a game-changing contribution to tackling environmental and climate issues.

The course is centred around two core modules. Environmental Humanities: Frameworks and Debates introduces the relevant methodological approaches and explores the innovative ways in which the arts and humanities are able to join or challenge scientific and technological responses. The second module, the Interdisciplinary Dissertation, enables you to work one-to-one with a supervisor to explore a topic of your choice in depth, bringing together theories and concepts from modules across the course.

You can structure the remainder of your course around your areas of interest. This includes further modules chosen from topics as varied as environmental philosophy, approaches to environmental history, cross-cultural understandings of nature, and religious understandings of living in a time of crisis, as well as the opportunity to take a language module and (timetable permitting) modules from other faculties in the university.

Our intention is to serve the societies in which we all live by producing thoughtful, critical and engaged citizens who will contribute positively in a rapidly changing and complex world. We will provide you with the tools for analysis, interpretation and expression, tools to discuss and compare models of human life and its flourishing, and tools for imagining the future.

Course structure

Year 1 modules

Core modules:

Environmental Humanities: Frameworks and Debates

This 30-credit module introduces current, cutting-edge and emergent topics and debates within interdisciplinary research in the environmental humanities. It also enables you to understand how the histories of environmental degradation and climate change are interlinked with inequalities around gender, race and class.

Interdisciplinary Dissertation

The dissertation (60 credits)) is carried out on a substantial topic in any discipline or disciplines represented in your programme of study. You will choose the topic under expert guidance, bringing together theories and concepts from modules across the programme. If you are studying part-time, you take your dissertation in year 2.

Optional modules:

Finally, you will choose 90 credits of elective modules from across the Faculty of Arts & Humanities or beyond, so that your total number of credits adds up to exactly 180. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of your programme, some modules will be specifically recommended to you by your Programme Director.

Optional modules in previous years have included

• Subaltern Futurism: Ecology, Agriculture and World Literature (30 credits)
• The Nature of History: Approaches to Environmental History (30 credits)
• Science, Technology and the Remaking of Nature (30 credits)
• Current Issues in Environmental Philosophy (30 credits)
• Theology, Nature, Environment (30 credits)
• The Literatures of Slavery (30 credits)
• Science, Technology and Society: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives (30 credits)
• Engaging Policymakers with Humanities Research (30 credits)
• Power and Health (online) (30 credits)

You may also choose one or more other elective MA modules from within the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, provided the timetabling is compatible.

MA or MSc modules taught in other faculties are also available, provided the timetabling is compatible. These may include, for example:

• Planetary Health in Social Context
• Society, Energy, Environment & Resilience: Applied Environmental Anthropology
• Context and Challenges in Energy and Society
• Risk, Science and Communication
• Risk Frontiers
• Understanding Risk
• Social Dimensions of Risk and Resilience
• Climate, Risk and Society
• Global Environmental Law

For the MA you will need to take a total of 180 credits. If you wish, you may take an additional 20-credit language module offered by the University’s Centre for Foreign Language Study (CFLS), meaning that you would finish your course with a total of 200 credits. Not all CFLS language modules will be open to you: some of them may not be compatible with your timetable.

Information for international students

If you are an international student who does not meet the requirements for direct entry to this degree, you may be eligible to take a pre-Masters pathway programme at the Durham University International Study Centre.

Fees and funding

For further information see the course listing.