GEOG41430: SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF RISK AND RESILIENCE

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• 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 these 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.

• Theories of risk and resilience
• Prediction, probability and uncertainty in risk governance
• Risk technologies and national security
• Politics of risk and resilience knowledge practices
• The ethics and politics of uncertainty
• Risk and resilience as public policy frameworks
• Risk and resilience in humanitarian and disaster response
• Risk, resilience and the production of socio-economic inequality
• Social dimensions of environmental and climate risks and resilience to them
• Critical approaches to risk techniques and resilience strategies
• Human dimensions of environmental change, including hazards and climate change
• Social, political and cultural understandings of resilience
• Ways of knowing risk/epistemologies of risk and resilience
• Methodological strategies and techniques

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Advanced understanding and critical analysis of risk and resilience.
• Advanced interpretation and evaluation of different approaches to the problem of risk and resilience in relation to specific cases.
• Advanced understanding of conceptual and methodological strategies and techniques required to understand risk and resilience.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Demonstrable understanding of the historical and context specificity of the problem of risk and resilience.
• Application of module concepts with a view to analyzing problems, for example security, displacement and hazards, that are approached via risk techniques.
• Presentation in both oral and written formats present of the findings of specific analyses.

Key Skills:

• The ability to debate ideas, while recognizing and respecting the viewpoints of others
• Verbal presentation
• Written communication
• Advanced individual learning and study.
• Team-work in presentations and in a workshop format.

• Lectures/seminars introduce course material and involve discussion on the basis of (a) pre-set readings and other resources (e.g. videos and online materials), and (b) discussion of themes introduced in the lectures.
• Workshops operate as interactive learning spaces via group work, student discussion and presentations. Students will receive feedback on essay development through individual presentations at the end of each term.
• Tutorials are opportunities to support students in ensuring comprehension of key concepts as well as developing their own ideas.
• Summative assessment for the module is two research essays (one each in Part I and Part II), and one oral presentation (at the end of Term 2).
• Theme I Risk, Security and Society:
• Through a combination of seminars, workshops and tutorials, Theme I (Term 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. The seminars are organised to allow students to reflect on, debate, and diagnose various dimension of risk and security with specific emphasis on security and society in the early 21st century. Theme I offers advanced understanding of the geographies of security, particularly the ways in which security challenges are governed increasingly through the prism of risk. It responds to the growing realisation that many risks are being created through social processes bound to questions of security, including the ways that risk techniques are emerging and being employed as a means of securing uncertain futures. The workshops are designed to allow students to present their own independent research and thinking on a relevant topic of their own choice. Tutorials offer an opportunity for students to consolidate their thinking in smaller group session. On completion of the module, students will have substantive theoretical and empirical knowledge of the specific societal emergence of the problem of security and different responses to the problem of security.
• Theme II Disruption, Resilience and Politics:
• The second component of the module 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. Seminars will also ask students to engage with practical applications of different concepts of risk and resilience, to analyse how theoretical concepts are translated into policies and practices, and to think critically about their own interests in risk and resilience. The seminars will incorporate student presentations, lectures, and small group discussions. The tutorials provide an opportunity to discuss students questions and ideas in more depth.

NB: formative work is a compulsory part of this module. Formative tasks operate as an important step towards the Summative Research Essays I and II. It provides students with an opportunity to develop initial ideas, and discuss with other students and with the lecturer the selected topic for their essay. In Term 1, students will present their research questions and essay outline at a workshop. They will receive formative feedback from their colleagues and from the instructors (spoken comments following presentation). Formative presentations serve as a preparation for Summative Presentations at the end of Term 2. In Term 2, we continue this pattern of essay preparation and build students oral presentation skills. Students will bring essay topics for peer and instructor feedback. The instructor and colleagues will provide feedback on focusing the essay topic, suggestions for further reading, refining the essay question, and structuring the overarching argument. At the end of Term 2, students give Summative Presentations on their essay ideas, receiving summative feedback on the oral presentation and formative feedback towards essay development. Summative Research Essay 2 is submitted in Term 3.

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