MSc International Disaster Management

For entry in the academic year beginning September 2027, the tuition fees are as follows:

• MSc (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £15,400
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £32,200

The fees quoted above are fully inclusive of tuition, administration and computational costs.

Fees for entry are subject to yearly review. The University reserves the right to increase your tuition fee by up to 7% each year for courses lasting more than one year, including to reflect rising costs associated with delivering our educational and wider student experience. Postgraduate fees information .

Always contact the admissions team if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

International student CAS deposit

Self-funded international applicants are required to pay a deposit of £2500 towards their tuition fees before a confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) is issued. Some applicants will be required to pay a higher deposit. More information on tuition fee deposits .

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

We know that student finance can be complicated. The links below provide further information to help guide you.

• Learn more about - student finance options for UK students.
• Learn more about - fees and finance for international students .
• Graduates of The University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University can receive a 10% discount on their master's degree tuition fees as part of our Manchester Alumni Loyalty Discount scheme.

Through this module, students will develop crucial knowledge concerning the relationship between disasters and the various infrastructures that support and sustain life. From the supply chains that arrange the distribution of aid and the undersea cable networks that engender digital forms of surveillance to energy systems prone to cyber-attack and government itself, one cannot claim to comprehend emergencies and their governance without a sophisticated and rigorous understanding of infrastructure. Infrastructure is pivotal to contemporary conceptualisations of both the causes and consequences of emergencies. Through a focus on infrastructure, for instance, we can probe how the effects of emergencies ripple through networks that span the globe whilst also offering adequate analysis of the way that the impacts emergencies bear are unevenly distributed according to differential access to infrastructure. At the same time, though, infrastructure determines and guides the very institutional practices that make up security in the first place. Access to different technologies shape what steps governments can take. At the same time, the importance of particular infrastructure means certain technical knowledges become crucial to security. Further still, the expansion of infrastructures dictates how far state power stretches into the daily life of global populations. All these matters and many more are probed in this module through an array of cases that characterise the security landscape of the 21st century, from energy blackouts and the development of global vaccination networks to terrorism and the development of new infrastructure in dealing with the ravages of climate change. And lastly, through this range of case, the module will develop the analytical and critical capabilities of students by engaging with various accounts of the ethical, cultural and political ramifications that rise to prominence where issues around infrastructure intersect with emergencies. This includes probing the effects of mass surveillance, evaluating authorities’ ability to follow prescribed protocols in emergencies and examining the influence of private companies in security practices.

The module aims to:

• Outline scholarly knowledge and debates that have evaluated the multiple connections between security, emergency governance and infrastructure.
   
• Present a critically informed practical skill-set and understanding of the application of a range of infrastructures for the purposes of security and emergency governance.
   
• Engage in-depth with a variety of key events from the history of security and emergency governance to understand the role of infrastructure within them.
   
• Establish key ethical, political and cultural issues that arise where security and emergency governance are considered through its facilitation via different forms of infrastructure.

The module is organised around various forms of engagement with the world of security and emergency. The module includes ten lectures. Each lecture focuses on a crucial aspect of the relationship between emergency governance and digital technologies. Centring each week on a specific case study, the lectures bring the issues discussed to life through the use of virtual tours of previous sites of emergency and ten-minute discussion groups using the survey technology Kahoot!

The lectures are followed by a seminar. Whilst seven seminars, start with a 10-15 minute presentation by groups of students on the themes of the overall lecture, the remainder are organised in the form of a reading group, discussion and assessment guidance.

10x1 hour lectures

10x1 hour seminars

10x2 hours office hour

At the end of the module, students will be able to display in-depth subject-specific knowledge and understanding of:

• The forms of knowledge and infrastructures used to analyse, monitor and to govern emergencies
  
   
• The practices through which such knowledges and technologies are applied, including processes such as surveillance, warning and decision making          
  
   
• The range of organisations both public and private involved in the delivery of security and emergency governance through infrastructures

 

• Key case studies that exemplify components of the relationship between security and infrastructures
  
   
• The transdisciplinary debates that have developed to critically understand the political, social, ethical and cultural ramifications of the connections between security and infrastructures.

At the end of the module, students will be able to display a number key broader intellectual skills including but not limited to:

• Deploying conceptual frameworks to critically analyse evidence from a number of different disciplinary perspectives
   
• Presenting evidence through coherent narration of case studies
   
• Using a range of research techniques to explore and identify evidence and knowledge relevant for constructing arguments

Students completing the module will be able to display a number of key practical skills, including but not limited to:

• Developing coherent and critical arguments
   
• Critically assessing a range of evidence
   
• Translating knowledge from academia into policy
   
• Conducting independent research and writing
   
• Presenting in public and engaging in public debate and discussion

Students completing the module will be able to evidence a number of transferable and practical skills. These skills include:

• Organising individual workloads and meeting strict deadlines
   
• Working with others
   
• Communicating orally and in writing
   
• Using capacity for creativity and innovation through applying acquired knowledge
   
• Confidence with a range of assessment methods

Assessment Task	Formative or Summative	Weighting
Essay Plan	Formative	0%
Student Presentations	Formative	0%
Emergency Inquest/Simulation	Summative	50%
Self-designed Essay	Summative	50%

 

Feedback method	Formative or Summative
Written feedback on written assignments	Summative
Verbal feedback on presentations	Formative

 

Amoore L (2013) The Politics of Possibility: Risk and Security Beyond Probability, Duke University Press, Durham

Anderson B (2017) Encountering affect: Capacities, apparatuses, conditions. Routledge, London

Aradau, C. (2010) ‘Security That Matters: Critical Infrastructure and Objects of Protection’, Security Dialogue, 41(5), pp. 491–514

Escobar, A., 2018. Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. Duke University Press.

Foucault M (2007) Security, Territory, Population, Palgrave-Macmillan, London

Graham, S. ed., 2010. Disrupted cities: When infrastructure fails. Routledge, London

Kitchin, R (2014) The Data Revolution¿: Big Data, Open Data, Data Infrastructures and Their Consequences . Los Angeles: SAGE

Lyon, D (2015) Surveillance after Snowden. John Wiley & Sons, London

Parisi, L. (2019) ‘Critical Computation: Digital Automata and General Artificial Thinking’, Theory, Culture & Society, 36(2), pp. 89–121

Peoples C and Vaughn-Williams N (2015) Critical Security Studies: An Introduction, Routledge, New York