Media, Communications & International Journalism MSc
Climate Change, Environment and Society SOCIO5130
- Academic Session: 2026-27
- School: School of Social and Political Sciences
- Credits: 20
- Level: Level 5 (SCQF level 11)
- Typically Offered: Either Semester 1 or Semester 2
- Available to Visiting Students: Yes
- Collaborative Online International Learning: No
- Curriculum For Life: No
Short Description
Anthropogenic climate change is reshaping everyday life, power relations, health, wellbeing and systems of inequality around the world. We will ask what it means to live on a planet where greenhouse gas emissions are changing weather patterns and ecologies. How do people across the global north and south experience, contest, report, and represent these transformations? And how does climate and environmental change intersect with race, gender, class, disability, religion, and human mobility. Through lectures, seminars, and creative assessment exercises, students will learn how to apply theoretical insights from across the social and political sciences to real-world case studies. This course will provide students with a strong conceptual foundation for understanding the social and cultural dimensions of climate and environmental change.
Timetable
10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars (on campus)
Excluded Courses
None
Co-requisites
None
Assessment
Individual Written Assignment (60%) 2500 words
Individual Presentation with Digital Output (infographic, podcast, data visualisation, video, website) (40%)
Course Aims
This course aims to: 1) introduce students to the social and cultural dimensions of climate and environmental change; 2) present diverse perspectives from across the world using social theory, ethnographic research, global case studies and popular media; 3) expand students' ability to address the inequalities wrought through climate and environmental change via teaching critical approaches to care, responsibility, and environmental justice.
Intended Learning Outcomes of Course
By the end of this course students will be able to:
1. Critically apply social science insights about the intersection of environmental and climate change with race, gender, and class .
2. Critically evaluate how global politics, colonial histories, and economies shape ecological crises and the responses to them.
3. Understand and compare cross-cultural understandings of nature, landscape, and more-than-human life.
4. Apply theoretical frameworks such as political ecology, multispecies ethnography, and the Anthropocene to empirical cases.
5. Design independent and group based reflexive responses to climate and environmental change.