Disaster Management and Resilience MSc

Course overview

If you are looking to start your career in disaster management and humanitarian action, or currently work in a local or national government disaster management agency, an NGO or civil society organisation and need to further your career; this course could provide you with the advanced skills and knowledge you need.

• This 100% online master's course is designed to enable you to develop the knowledge and skills needed to anticipate, assess, plan for and manage complex disasters. It will also help you to operate confidently, develop policies and implement strategies successfully.
• The overall aim is for you to be able to contribute to the strengthening of community, professional, organisational, national and international capacity to deal with complex multifactorial disasters, developing strategies that could increase resilience to acute and chronic threats to both economies and societies.
• During your studies, you should advance your skills in evaluating complex situations, developing creative and innovative solutions, and implementing lessons learned.

Why you should study this course

• Climate change, urban pressure and lack of disaster preparedness are increasingly transforming natural hazards, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or tsunamis into disastrous events causing life and economic losses.
• Upon successful completion of the course, you should have an advanced understanding of concepts, theories policy and practice within the areas of risk, humanitarian practice, development, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation so that you are better able to evaluate the activities of NGOs, government organisations, multilateral agencies and institutions and drive necessary improvements.
• Coventry University was the first UK university to establish courses in disaster management and emergency planning over 20 years ago (Hulse & Moseley 1998) and is still a leading provider of higher education courses and consultancy services in emergency and disaster management capabilities. Some of our alumni have now progressed to senior organisational resilience roles worldwide.
• There is dedicated support available for those who are new to Higher Education, or returning after a long break, with additional modules designed to transition you into postgraduate study and support you as you learn to research.
• You will have the opportunity to carry out an independent piece of research of your choosing, producing an industry-facing working paper which should be of publishable quality.

Careers and opportunities

Upon successful completion of this course, you will have knowledge of:

• risk, its components and influencing factors, approaches to assessment, and prioritisation and organisational role in planning, managing and recovering from humanitarian crises and disasters
• policy and approaches for mitigating, preparing for, managing and recovering from crises, conflict and disasters for responding agencies, organisations and affected communities
• approaches to assessing complexity and interaction and developing, monitoring and evaluating resilience in processes, systems, organisations and communities at risk from known and emergent threats in a sustainable way
• stakeholder analysis and multi-stakeholder engagement, communication, co-operation and governance in all aspects of policy and strategy development, implementation and management, at all scales in disaster contexts
• challenges and approaches for information management, evaluating uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity in knowledge, appropriate and defensible decisions for managing complex disaster situations
• issues and challenges at the forefront of research and practice in disasters and resilience
• how to evaluate and use appropriate methods of enquiry and analysis, and to progress good practice in the discipline over the course of their career
• skills demanded to research, evaluate high-level material to produce an independent working paper that meets ethical requirements of the university, synthesises both academic and sector perspectives and presents findings and recommendations in a professional way.

Our part-time students are often sponsored by their employers, and successful completion of this postgraduate level qualification could provide the credibility needed to progress in their organisation and career.

Through the course we explore how modern society is creating ever more complex risk and interdependency. The impact of features such as societal inequalities, social tension, extremism, global supply and economic instability, reliance on technology, severe weather conditions, pandemic disease and climate change means that there are now many career opportunities in this field. When you successfully graduate, you could pursue or further a career in sectors including national and local government, NGOs, UN organisations and other regional organisations, healthcare or consultancy.

Our current teaching staff and the university’s career specialists, known as the Talent Team, can support your search for employment in the UK or overseas by making use of our alumni network, industrial contacts, and individual advice (subject to availability).