Course summary

The programme aims to provide students with a thorough grounding in Global Catastrophic and Existential Risk, how this can be managed and mitigated, and its relationship with transformative sociotechnological trends. The programme will provide students with a specific toolset of concepts, methods, and approaches that have been developed by leading researchers working to understand and mitigate the most extreme forms of global risk. It aims to: Provide students with a rigorous understanding of the emerging transdisciplinary field of ERS, with a focus both on training future researchers in its methods and approaches and producing a cohort of well-informed partners in relevant positions across policy and industry to help mitigate global risk; Develop students’ ability to critically engage with a wide range of interdisciplinary research on risk drivers, multipliers, and mitigation challenges, the core skills required to study unprecedented and extreme future risk, and the opportunity to put these to work in both a focused individual study of specific global challenges and a participatory foresight exercise; Introduce students to a variety of mitigation opportunities and challenges, focusing on the reality of policymaking in relevant areas (such as AI, biosecurity, climate change, and nuclear policy) and the different impact strategies and theories of change that can influence these. Establish and promote standards of rigorous and responsible research in this area, highlighting both the need for high quality research and the pitfalls of irresponsible practises, drawing on a rich history of research, policy, and activism. Equip student to apply insights from this area of research to related disciplines such as Science and Technology Studies, Disaster Studies, Philosophy, Economics, International Relations, Biosecurity, and AI and for risk or technology focused careers across government, industry, and civil society.