Nature, Society and Environmental Governance (Taught)

The information provided on this page was correct at the time of publication (November 2025). For complete and up-to-date information about this course, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas.

The MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance (MSc NSEG or NSEG) is grounded in the conviction that responding to contemporary global challenges demands intellectual rigour, innovation and flexibility.

Some of the most pressing environmental issues of our time have politics intensely at their core, interwoven with the complexities of historical institutions, social practices, beliefs and material infrastructures. Understanding these complex phenomena requires multiple perspectives and the ability to think across disciplinary boundaries.

Over the year, you will encounter a broad range of expertise from human and political geography, anthropology, science studies, the environmental humanities and environmental sciences. The overarching objective is not to offer a singular view of nature, society, or governance, but to present a set of theoretical and practical insights alongside scholarly debates which are alive and in flux.

This course will enable you to develop a theoretically sophisticated and empirically grounded understanding of the dynamic relations between environments and societies. Students should expect to engage with theoretical material and deconstruct some of the basic assumptions underpinning terms like ‘society’, ‘governance’, ‘environment’ and ‘nature’ to develop conceptual tools to understand contemporary global change.

This is not an ‘environmental policy’ programme - it is a programme that will prepare you to grapple with contemporary global challenges from the perspectives of critical social theories informed by a range of disciplines.

The course aims to:

• provide broad and critical engagements with key debates in the environmental social sciences, focusing on the relations between nature, society, and environmental governance;

• foster an understanding of the politics of environmental knowledge claims, how such claims are formulated and asserted, and their effects in practice;

• develop students’ conceptions of, and skills in, the methods and practices of contemporary environmental social sciences, providing critical foundations for further research;

• integrate students into world-leading research taking place in the School of Geography and the Environment, providing core teaching and supervision by research-active staff; and

• enhance students' personal and professional development.

The intended learning outcomes for the course are to:

• identify and evaluate key theoretical approaches from the social sciences (especially human geography) through which to understand environment-society relations;

• apply concepts from a range of critical social theories to appraise and analyse environmental knowledge claims, governance practices and environmental/social outcomes;

• design qualitative research projects, select and implement appropriate research methodologies, and produce research outputs in a variety of formats; and

• explain and synthesize analyses of environmental contexts in written and oral formats to persuade and inform professional and public audiences.

For the full description, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas