Course Content and Structure
The taught elements include the core modules “A Transdiciplinary Introduction to Existential Risk Studies” and “An Interdisciplinary Survey of Risk Drivers, Multipliers, and Mitigation Challenges”, and a selection of elective specialisation modules, covering specialist topics. These topics vary year by year, reflecting the current research interests of staff. Students should attend the core modules plus at least 2 elective modules.
There are Work in Progress seminars, where students present and discuss their individual dissertation research. Students will also take part in, and evaluate, a participatory futures/foresight exercise on a key aspect of global risk, giving them hands on experience with the methods developed and utilised by the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
For their supervised research, students work individually with supervision from domain experts to produce three pieces of written work: two essays of up to 5,000 words and a dissertation of up to 12,000 words. Students will also be assessed based on their contributions to the futures/foresight exercise and the Work in Progress seminars.
In addition, students are encouraged to integrate themselves into the research culture of CSER and the Institute for Technology and Humanity by attending research seminars, reading groups, conferences and other events, as well as other lectures, seminars and events relevant to their interests within the wider University.
Students can expect 10 hours of one-to-one supervision to support them in developing ideas and written work for each essay.
Learning Outcomes
Knowledge and Understanding
- An in-depth survey of the emerging transdisciplinary field of Existential Risk Studies, including key concepts, ethical and epistemological challenges, methods, approaches, and tools, and impact and outreach strategies.
- Critical engagement with the historical and sociological development of the field, and of broader awareness about existential and global catastrophic risk, the factors influencing this, and the difficulties in producing rigorous and responsible research in this area.
- A systematic interdisciplinary understanding of risk drivers, risk multipliers, and risk mitigation challenges that contribute to the current level of existential and global catastrophic risk (AI, biosecurity, environmental change, global-scale natural catastrophes, and nuclear security).
- A critical awareness of the range of proposals for risk mitigation and the governance of science, technology, and other anthropogenic risk drivers, their feasibility, potential benefits and drawbacks, and relationship to existing policies, institutions, and movements.
Skills and other attributes
- Expertise at implementing methodologies that have been developed by researchers in existential risk studies, including the use of analytical risk assessment frameworks, the application of futures, foresight, and horizon scanning to risk assessment and evaluation, the construction of plausible, useful, and engaging scenarios tools, and the application of robust decision-making tools for dealing with uncertainty.
- Familiarity with a wider range of disciplinary perspectives on existential and global catastrophic risk and the methodologies used in constructing them, including the ability to implement these where appropriate.
The ability to translate knowledge and concepts between academic, policy, and industry contexts, including experience with participatory methods and policy co-design tools. - The ability to construct and deconstruct popular narratives about existential and global catastrophic risk, and communicate research responsibly for a broad audience.
If you have any questions about the MPhil, please contact the team on education@cser.cam.ac.uk.