Primary tabs
The programme provides students with a toolkit of concepts, methods, and approaches to understand and mitigate global risk. The programme will:
Provide a rigorous understanding of the emerging transdisciplinary field of Existential Risk Studies
Train students in critically engaging with a wide range of interdisciplinary research on risk drivers, multipliers, and mitigation challenges, including the core skills required to interpret and apply scientific research into unprecedented and extreme future risk.
Provide the opportunity to put these to work in both a focused individual study of specific global challenges and a group futures thinking systematic exercise.
Give students an understanding of the variety of mitigation opportunities and challenges, focusing on the reality of policymaking in relevant areas (which may include but are not limited to AI, biosecurity, climate change, and nuclear policy) and the different impact strategies or theories of change that can influence these.
Familiarize students with, and cultivate an appreciation for, standards of rigorous and responsible research in this area, highlighting both the need for high quality research and the pitfalls of irresponsible practices.
Enable students to recognize opportunities for applying insights from this research to related disciplines (which may include but are not limited to Science and Technology Studies, Disaster Studies, Philosophy, Economics, International Relations, and Computer Science) and to various risk or technology focused careers across sectors such as government, industry, academia, and civil society.
Learning Outcomes
Knowledge and Understanding
By the end of the course students will have acquired:
An in-depth understanding of the emerging transdisciplinary field of Existential Risk Studies, including key concepts, ethical and epistemological challenges, methods, approaches, and tools, and impact strategies.
A systematic interdisciplinary understanding of risk drivers, risk multipliers, and risk mitigation challenges that contribute to global catastrophic risk.
A broader awareness of existential and global catastrophic risk and the range of perspectives on it, the factors influencing this, and the difficulties in producing rigorous and responsible research in this area.
A critical awareness of the range of proposals for global catastrophic or existential risk mitigation, their feasibility, potential benefits and drawbacks, and relationship to existing policies and institutions.
Skills and other attributes
Graduates of the course will be able to:
Implement methods that have been developed by researchers in Existential Risk Studies or cognate fields.
Constructively engage with a wide range of disciplinary perspectives on existential and global catastrophic risk, including the ability to implement these where appropriate and to evaluate them from different ethical and epistemological points of view.
Translate knowledge and concepts across academic, policy, and industry contexts.
Construct and deconstruct engaging narratives about existential and global catastrophic risk and communicate research effectively and responsibly.
Continuing
Students admitted to the MPhil can apply to continue as PhD students with a relevant Faculty. For details on the PhD application process and required standards, students should consult the respective Department.
Open Days
The University hosts and attends fairs and events throughout the year, in the UK and across the world. We also offer online events to help you explore your options:
-
Discover Cambridge: Master’s and PhD study webinars - these Spring events provide practical information about applying for postgraduate study.
-
Postgraduate Virtual Open Days - taking place in November each year, the Open Days focus on subject and course information.
For more information about upcoming events visit our events pages.
The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) runs online webinars for applicants throughout the year. Please see the CSER website for information on how to register for these events.