Module GEOG42415: Social Dimensions of Risk and Resilience

Department: Geography

GEOG42415: Social Dimensions of Risk and Resilience

Prerequisites

• None

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• This module provides advanced training in topics relevant to understanding the social dimensions of risk and resilience. Through this module, students will develop a strong foundation in concepts, theories, and techniques essential to carry out research in aspects of the social dimensions of risk and resilience. The perspective is broadly interdisciplinary, drawing on research in human geography, security studies, humanitarianism, migration and refugee studies, sociology of risk, political science, science and technology studies. The module focuses on a variety of historical and conceptual ways of understanding risk from a critical angle.

Content

• Indicative module content includes:
• Theories of risk and resilience
• Politics of risk and resilience knowledge practices
• Risk and resilience as public policy frameworks
• Critical approaches to risk techniques and resilience strategies
• Risk technologies and national security
• Risk, resilience and the production of socio-economic inequality
• Social dimensions of environmental and climate risks and resilience to them
• Social and cultural understandings of risk and resilience
• Methodological strategies and techniques

Learning Outcomes

• Upon successful completion of this module, students will:  
• Have advanced understanding and critical analysis of risk and resilience.
• Have advanced understanding of the historical and context specificity of the problems of risk and resilience as discourses and practices.
• Have advanced knowledge of conceptual and methodological strategies and techniques required to understand risk and resilience.
• Have advanced knowledge and understanding of the relations between climate change, environmental processes, and sustainable futures, including the conditions for and barriers to achieving sustainable futures.

• Have advanced understanding and critical analysis of risk and resilience.
• Have advanced understanding of the historical and context specificity of the problems of risk and resilience as discourses and practices.
• Have advanced knowledge of conceptual and methodological strategies and techniques required to understand risk and resilience.
• Have advanced knowledge and understanding of the relations between climate change, environmental processes, and sustainable futures, including the conditions for and barriers to achieving sustainable futures.

• An ability to synthesis argument critically for both oral and written presentation from different sources of material, including material delivered orally and in reports.
• Effective written or oral communication, including for wider dissemination.
• Advanced qualitative data analysis

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Lectures will introduce core concepts and theories of risk and resilience. Each 2 hour session pairs lecture material with an hour-long seminar, in which students will engage in more-depth discussions on the basis of pre-set readings and resources (e.g. videos, online materials) and discussion of themes and concepts introduced in the lectures.
• Theme 1 provides students with an opportunity to develop an in-depth appreciation of the emergence and deployment of risk techniques as a means of securing the uncertain future.
• Theme 2 provides students with a series of learning activities aimed at developing their skills in analysing and interpreting theories of resilience. Seminars focus on close reading of assigned texts, student presentation of core ideas, discussion of differences and questions raised by the readings.
• The module includes two workshops. The first operates as an interactive problem-oriented learning space via group work, student discussion and simulation exercises. The second workshop will consist of student presentations on report development where student will receive peer and formative feedback on report plans. The workshops ask students to engage with practical applications of different concepts of risk and resilience, as well as to analyse how theoretical concepts are translated into policies and practices, and to think critically about their own interests in risk and resilience.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Students will receive formative feedback on report development through individual presentations of report plans at a final workshop.

■ Students who do not attend monitored activities shown under Teaching Methods and Learning Hours, or who fail to complete the summative or formative assessment(s) specified above, may be subject to the Academic Progress procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University.