Program start date | Application deadline |
2025-09-01 | - |
2026-01-01 | - |
2026-05-01 | - |
Program Overview
Disaster Management and Resilience MSc
Course Overview
Are you starting or looking to advance your career in disaster management and humanitarian action? If you currently work in a local or national government agency, NGO, or civil society organisation, this course should provide the advanced skills and knowledge you need.
- Develop the necessary knowledge and skills to anticipate, assess, mitigate, critically analyse, prepare, plan for and successfully manage increasingly complex disasters. Learn to operate confidently in policy development, strategy implementation, and response and recovery planning and management.
- 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. There will be opportunities to take part in training and exercises through simulated emergency scenarios in our immersive Simulation Centre.
What You'll Study
This course aims to provide you with a solid understanding of risk management theory and practical applications. Learn how to create long-term management plans to help mitigate disaster before it arrives.
Modules
- Supporting Transition to Postgraduate Study – 0 credits
- This regular online module helps you transition to postgraduate study by developing essential academic skills to improve your effectiveness as a learner. You will focus on areas such as critical reading, academic writing, and referencing.
- Disaster Risk, Resilience, Adaptation and Sustainability – 15 credits
- Explore the connections between disaster risk, resilience, adaptation, development, and sustainability through historical and current global events, strategies, and policies. Examine how these concepts shape international development, disaster risk reduction (DRR), and emergency work.
- Training and Exercise Design and Delivery – 15 credits
- Learn how to plan, design, and manage exercise programmes for disaster, crisis, and emergency management. The module places these exercises within the broader context of preparedness and organisational resilience, exploring training and exercise theories.
- Foresight, Insight and Strategy – 15 credits
- Explore strategies for long-term planning in a changing and uncertain world. Traditional planning often focuses on 5–10 years ahead, but global trends like social justice, climate change, and political shifts require more advanced approaches. You will explore methods like systems and strategic thinking to address complex, interconnected issues and meet the evolving needs of stakeholders.
- Community Preparedness, Recovery and Resilience – 15 credits
- Examine the concept of community resilience in emergency and disaster management, highlighting its varied interpretations in research and practice. Develop a strong understanding of resilience and its links to community preparedness and recovery efforts.
- Humanitarian Principles, Preparedness and Response – 15 credits
- Gain an understanding of modern theories of humanitarian action and management approaches to disaster preparedness and response. Examine the structure, goals, and standards of humanitarian organisations, as well as the challenges and changes they face. This module focuses on humanitarian response from the perspective of response agencies.
- Disaster Interventions, Evaluation and Learning – 15 credits
- Explore good governance practices for integrating effective and sustainable disaster interventions, linking international policies with local projects. Examine traditional and emerging approaches to disaster interventions, focusing on opportunities and best practices for Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL).
- Risk, Incidents and Leadership – 15 credits
- Develop a deep understanding of different views on risk and explore non-technical skills, risk reduction methods, and leadership models for managing incidents and crises. This module uses models and theories to evaluate the challenges of leadership and decision-making within command-and-control systems. You will also examine how incidents can provide valuable learning opportunities and investigate ways to overcome the barriers to implementing changes effectively.
- Research Perspectives and Practice – 15 credits
- This module aims to equip you with skills in critical evaluation, research design, and data collection for assessing practices and policies in emergency and crisis-related fields. It covers key research processes and principles, exploring both extensive methods (such as surveys, archival research, and quantitative analysis) and intensive methods (like interviews, ethnography, and qualitative analysis). The module also addresses research ethics and how to effectively share research findings.
- Professional Working Paper – 50 credits
- You will be tasked with identifying a key issue within the emergency management and resilience sector and explore potential solutions using theoretical approaches. Working with a supervisor, you will create an industry-focused paper that researches and evaluates evidence, offering recommendations for change and addressing potential barriers at team, institutional, or national levels.
- Leading Diverse Workforces – 10 credits
- Understand how to lead and develop people in a diverse and inclusive way. You will explore topics such as leadership theories, culture, wellbeing, and strategies for improving equality, diversity, and inclusion in various organisational settings. You will also have the opportunity to develop strategic priorities for leadership and inclusivity.
How You'll Learn
All of our modules are designed to provide both the depth and rigour required for development, reflection and networking in this sector. Delivery is supported by our innovative online social learning platforms, allowing you to undertake substantial parts of your study at home, where you can revisit content and find additional materials. You also have access to our library's electronic resources 24/7, including thousands of books, ejournals and newspapers.
Teaching and learning methods may include:
- seminars and discussion
- practical sessions and workshops
- simulation exercises
- study visits
Entry Requirements
Typical entry requirements:
- UK: 2:2 undergraduate degree (or equivalent) in a relevant discipline. Applicants with a lower class of degree and/or professional experience only will be individually considered and will usually be interviewed prior to being offered a place on the course.
- International: 2:2 undergraduate degree (or equivalent) in a relevant discipline. Applicants with a lower class of degree and/or professional experience only will be individually considered and will usually be interviewed prior to being offered a place on the course.
Fees and Funding
- UK: £11,200
- EU: £11,200 per year with EU Support Bursary, £18,600 per year without EU Support Bursary
- International: £18,600
Careers and Opportunities
On successful completion of this course, you should 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.
Where Our Graduates Work
Successful graduates of this course have gone on to work here in countries including the UK, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan, the United States and Canada. Some have taken up roles as:
- planning officers
- emergency planners
- international humanitarian coordinators
- disaster risk reduction analysts
- deployable emergency response managers.
Employers of our previous graduates have included:
- UNICEF
- UNEP
- WFP
- Action Centre La Faim (Toronto, Canada)
- the Institute for Risk Management and Climate Change (Bogota, Colombia)
- WWF
- Danish Refugee Council
- Deutsche Bahn
- Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai, India)
- United Nations Population Fund (Jakarta, Indonesia)
- the British and German Red Cross
- The Netherlands Institute for Safety
- Medecins Sans Frontieres.
Overview:
- Founded in 1843 as the Coventry School of Design
- Received university status in 1992
- Over 30,000 students from over 150 countries
- Campuses in Coventry, London, and Scarborough
- Known for its focus on practical, industry-focused education
Student Life:
- Over 150 student clubs and societies
- Sports teams in various disciplines
- Student support services include counseling, mental health support, and disability support
- Campus facilities include a gym, swimming pool, and student union
Academics:
- Offers undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in a wide range of subjects
- Faculty with industry experience and research expertise
- Teaching methodologies include lectures, seminars, workshops, and project-based learning
- Academic support services include writing centers, math labs, and peer mentoring
- Unique academic programs include:
- Centre for Applied Science and Technology
- Centre for Business in Society
- Centre for Intelligent Systems
Top Reasons to Study Here:
- Ranked among the top 150 universities in the UK (Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023)
- Excellent industry connections and partnerships
- Specialized facilities such as the National Transport Design Centre and the Centre for Advanced Manufacturing
- Notable alumni include:
- Sir Frank Whittle, inventor of the jet engine
- Sir David Attenborough, naturalist and broadcaster
- Sir Patrick Stewart, actor
Services:
- Counseling and mental health support
- Health center
- Accommodation services
- Library with over 1 million books and resources
- Technology support
- Career development services