Advance announcement: MSc in Global Prosperity

The UCL Institute for Global Prosperity is launching an interdisciplinary Masters programme in Global Prosperity beginning in September 2016.

Study with IGP: We educate the problem solvers of the future

Do you want to see the major challenges for global prosperity better understood, managed and addressed? Are you someone who has the academic background, as well as the commitment and imagination to make real and positive contributions to your workplace, community, country or region? Are you looking for insight, analysis and practical skills that will help you be a more effective transition leader?

The IGP MSc in Global Prosperity is an intensiveone-year graduate degree – with flexible options built in – that offers a distinctive approach to developing pathways to global prosperity. It is global in its outlook and implementation. It emphasizes knowledge sharing, and builds on successes to problems already achieved in different locales around the world. Students learn from these successes, but also from each other. It is multidisciplinary, transcending silos in disciplinary thinking to leverage more innovative and effective solutions to global challenges.

Students joining IGP become part of a community of peers who stay connected, offer each other advice, and share successes throughout their careers.

Join our 2016 cohort: Register your interest and/or make an inquiry by emailing us. We will add you to our mailing list and will get in touch periodically to update you personally on new developments. We have the capacity to run informal information sessions for interested applicants beginning in May 2016. Please register your interest in advance in order to secure a place on a session.

MSc in Global Prosperity

Training international transition leaders

The world urgently needs leaders who can transcend dominant economic models that have generated considerable wealth but also formidable social and ecological dilemmas, and create innovative alternatives. The MSc in Global Prosperity equips ambitious, entrepreneurial students with new approaches to prosperity and its measurement while helping them to become transition leaders in their domains of interest (e.g. renewable energy, gender and health, youth employment, law, policy, finance, technology, child welfare, food and agriculture).

Enlightened measurements and prosperous pathways

Students who enroll in this programme will critically analyse the antecedents of today’s unsustainable economic cultures, from the history of economic growth and models of “development” to the multinational corporation as well as notions of social citizenship. Students will consider alternative measurements of prosperity such as the Social Progress Index from both theoretical and technical angles. Students will examine innovative pathways to prosperity, including (for example) the transition to renewable energy systems, sustainable transport or transparent financial services. Students will experiment with collective problem-solving methodologies from Human-centred Design to Theory U, in the context of wider processes of social innovation, and develop professional skills relating to analysis, presentation, social media, and policy brief writing.

Structure

Mode and duration: Full-time: 1 year; Flexible: up to 5 years

Students undertake modules to the value of 180 credits. The programme consists of four core modules (60 credits), two elective modules (30 credits) and an MSc dissertation (90 credits).

Core modules

Pathways to Prosperity 1: Global Legacies

Pathways to Prosperity 2: Global Futures

Research Methods 1: Measuring Global Prosperity

Research Methods 2: Problem-solving for Global Prosperity

Option modules

Students choose two thematically compatible elective modules to build on, strengthen and develop the academic capacities they bring to the degree, as well as developing new core strengths where desired. Options can be chosen from modules taught at UCL in, for example, Engineering, Global Health, Sustainable Resources, Energy, Anthropology, Economics, Geography, History, Philosophy, subject to the approval of the Programme Director, the prerequisites of the department offering the module, and availability.

Dissertation

All students undertake an independent research project leading to a dissertation (10,000 words).

Delivery

The programme is taught by world-class academics and expert practitioners, and combines cutting edge academic knowledge with skill acquisition and innovative peer-to-peer learning to address the most complex challenges for global prosperity. The programme includes four core modules, two elective modules, and an MSc dissertation.

MSc Tutors and team leaders:

Dr Tuukka Toivonen, Senior Lecturer in Social & Economic Innovation

Dr Matthew Davis, Lecturer in African Studies

Image credit: Jan Hoffmann, Lensational