Politics of Climate Change

Entry requirements

2:1 undergraduate degree (or equivalent) in a related subject.

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Months of entry

September

Course content

The PaIS Masters in the Politics of Climate Change is unique in its ability to place climate change policy within embedded political, economic, and social contexts. It equips students to be able to ask, and find answers to, some of the big, complex questions that sit behind our ability to meet net zero ambitions and targets. Understanding the complexities of climate politics can inform more lasting and just policy design.

Key thematic areas explored include: just transitions; fossil fuel phase out and incumbency; decolonial perspectives; green growth & de-growth; loss & damage; geopolitics of sustainable transitions; power & democracy; and climate denial and obstruction.

Alongside regular modules, students will be offered unique learning and networking opportunities: including negotiation and advocacy training (Café Diplomatico); and engagement with the PaIS Environmental Cluster and the university-wide Sustainability Spotlight group – both of which organise regular research and networking events.

This MA includes three core components: two climate-specific modules and a dissertation, leaving students to choose from a wide range of other climate change, public policy, development, international security, political theory, and international political economy modules. This MA is taught by world leading researchers in their fields, including: Professor Simon Caney; Dr Marit Hammond; Professor Caroline Kuzemko; and Dr Mitya Pearson.

Key transferable skills that you will gain:

• Ability to critically engage with the systemic politics of addressing one of the greatest-ever challenges to the world
• Understanding of how climate policies are shaped by, and help to re-shape, political, economic, and social contexts
• Insights into key opportunities for, and obstacles to, climate action, and into how to design more sustainable and feasible policies
• Ability to critically evaluate climate policy options and strategies
• Exposure to public policy; international political economy; and political theory approaches to climate change