MSc Peace, Conflict and Security at Durham University

Offering a fascinating insight into this complex and rapidly changing field, the MSc will develop your operational and vocational skills in peacebuilding, conflict prevention, and security. This course provides students with advanced, evidence-based, research-led knowledge of the complex and specialised areas of peacebuilding, peace-making, conflict management, and the contested meaning and provision of security during contemporary conflict interventions, inter- and intra-state violence, and post-conflict reconstruction. This custom-designed, interdisciplinary MSc provides you with the conceptual skills to think critically, creatively and in an integrated way about the causes, management, resolution and transformation of violent conflict, and the implications of ongoing changes in conflict dynamics for peace and human security.

Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences  |  Department: Politics and International Relations  |  Duration: 1 year full-time, 2 years part-time  |  Study mode: full-time (part-time option)  |  Intake: September 2027  |  Location: Durham, England, United Kingdom

What you will study

You will have opportunities to develop vocational skills in conflict analysis, post-conflict and humanitarian intervention, responding to issues of migration and displacement, participatory approaches to peacebuilding, and gender-sensitive approaches to security. You may choose to also explore these in the optional field trip module. Compulsory modules include Defence, Development and Diplomacy in Action, Perspectives on Peace, Conflict, and Security, Borders, Conflict and Displacement, Legacies of Conflict and Peacebuilding, Capstone Simulation Exercise:, Dissertation.

Official programme page