Course description
MA / PGDip / PGCert
The Development and Emergency Practice (DEP) course provides a unique academic setting for the study of international development, conflict, disaster management, urbanisation, humanitarianism and human rights. With its core emphasis on practice, the course offers students the opportunity to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes in the rapidly changing field of development and emergency practice.
Since its beginning in 1991 the course has established an international reputation for excellence. Well over 400 students from many countries have attended the course with many going on to hold senior positions in development and emergency organisations around the world. The course is targeted at those having or seeking careers within NGOs, bilateral or multi-lateral humanitarian, development and human rights agencies or governmental and commercial organisations working in international development.
Those who apply broadly fall into one of two groups: practitioners from NGOs, UN agencies, commercial companies and the military looking to reflect on their experiences and to further develop their skills and knowledge; and those looking for a career or life change, and who are exploring a possible role in international humanitarian, human rights or development work.
Reflecting the course’s commitment to human rights, in 2006 the singer Annie Lennox became its patron.
Course content
The programme is organised on a modular credit system. Modules combine taught activities and self-led study. A module of 20 credits, for example, approximates to 200 hours of student input up to 40 hours of which will be devoted to lectures, seminars, or individual tutorials. The remainder of the time is devoted to student-led study.
Theory of Practice: Approaches and Understandings (compulsory, 30 credits) This module provides the setting for students to understand and critically examine development and emergency practice. Using a livelihoods-based approach, the module begins by exploring the nature of poverty and vulnerability. It looks at how people attempt to meet basic needs and access resources, and the relative discrimination that hinders access; it reviews the ability of poorer communities to build and hold onto both tangible and intangible assets, and how assets are used both to increase capacity and to reduce vulnerability to shocks and stresses.
From the starting point of people themselves, the module seeks to make sense of the wide range of development and emergency interventions, from poverty reduction interventions (for example community empowerment, social risk management, rights-based approaches, advocacy, governance) to disaster mitigation and preparedness, gender, conflict resolution and peace building. The module is run as a series of one-day workshops that include presentations, group work, case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America, and an extended role-play where students are asked to enter into the mindsets of vulnerable communities.
Practice of Theory: Tools and Methods (compulsory, 30 credits) This module introduces students to the tools and approaches used by development and emergency practitioners, including needs assessment, programme design, and monitoring and evaluation. The module is organised as a series of head office programme department meetings in an international development organisation, where students take on the roles of programme staff assigned to regional desks or the policy unit.
The task of each desk in the first three weeks is to identify and formulate an initial assessment of a thematic or geographic issue, which may include a cross-border crisis, a specific developmental issue, or an emergency. Working from the initial assessment, each desk produces a development and/or emergency programme. Tools for this include developing a logical framework analysis comprising goal, purpose, outputs and activities; and a monitoring and evaluation plan. Programmes are developed to a level of detail reflecting interest and numbers on each desk. At the end of the semester desks present their strategies to an assembled panel for review.
Occasional training sessions are also held within the module, including media training, management accounting and action planning, and case studies of development and emergency programmes.
Armed Conflict and International Humanitarianism (optional, 20 credits) This module examines contemporary armed conflicts with an emphasis on the understanding of violence, the culture of war, and political and legal contexts. It aims to introduce conflict analysis and sensitivity and show how those approaches may shape international humanitarian action. It also examines conflicts and responses to them through the perspectives of the actors involved: mostly local populations and the international community.
Globalisation: Environment and Development (optional, 20 credits) Topics and themes to be covered include: theories of globalisation and the structure of the global system; global population growth; agriculture, biotechnology, land reform and hunger; global urbanisation and industrialisation trends and policies; the globalisation of production, trade, aid, investment and debt; the revolution in global transport and communications; the changing role of global institutions; the emerging geopolitics of the post-cold war era; and a range of global environmental issues including the greenhouse effect, ozone depletion, air and water pollution, solid and toxic waste disposal, freshwater supply, the degradation of soils and vegetation, loss of biodiversity, and access to the global commons. The policy aspects of these various issues will also be examined.
Globalisation: Global Institutions (optional, 20 credits) This module examines the changing nature and role of global regulatory, financial and development institutions (for example the World Bank and the UN agencies) in the context of globalisation, the policies emanating from these bodies and their significance for current development practices.
Disasters, Risk, Vulnerability and Climate Change (optional, 20 credits) This module looks at factors contributing to vulnerability due to structural forces created by economic globalisation and their impact on local-level vulnerability. The emphasis will be mainly on the urban sector where such factors are more manifest. The module will put people at the centre of the examination, focusing on the socio-economic and political dimensions of vulnerability rather than hazards.
Human Rights Law and Activism (optional, 10 credits) This module examines the development of the international system of human rights protection over the past 50 years. In exploring the scope and content of the major international human rights standards, the module also investigates some of the contemporary political and cultural challenges to their implementation and enforcement.
Partnerships for Development: a Critical Assessment (optional, 10 credits) This module explores what is meant by the term ‘partnership’ in a development context through an examination of its different definitions, approaches and forms. Arguments for and against the theory of partnering are analysed and practical experiences drawn upon to assess the pros and cons of working in this way. As well as looking at some of the skills needed to effectively combine different sector drivers, incentives and resources, the module also addresses the challenge of evaluating partnerships and considers issues relating to status and power, governance, accountability and engagement.
The compulsory modules for the MA are:
Research Methods (10 credits) The module aims to advance students’ knowledge and understanding of research, including both qualitative and quantitative methods.
MA Dissertation (50 credits) The dissertation gives students the opportunity to explore an aspect of development and emergency practice in an extended piece of self-led study. The dissertation can be written, or can be ‘unconventional’, for example a film, a play or a piece of creative art.
The following modules, offered by other departments, can be attended by DEP students. They are offered for audit, ie not for credit. However, it is possible to undertake the subject for credit by attending the lecture series and undertaking an Independent Study.
World of Refugees The existence of refugees poses a challenging and complex agenda of issues which now constitute a significant area of academic inquiry and research. The module focuses on large-scale emergencies in the developing world and on the volatile conditions of the asylum 'problem' in western Europe.
Global Governance, Civil Society and Social Movements investigates the institutions of global governance and the dynamics of civil society, understood as the space for interaction between institutions and non-state actors. It asks questions about the nature of accountability and legitimacy, as well as examining claims that civil society presents a democratising force for global governance.
Development and Urbanisation examines the theories, processes and consequences of rapid urbanisation in the developing world within the context of economic development and social change. The changing paradigms of development - modernisation, growth with equity, market enablement - are examined. The emerging spatial distribution of cities and the city building process is explored, including rural-urban migration and social transformation, as well as the contrasting processes of production and the informal sector in the urban economy.
Field trips
The course offers several field trip options each year. Previous field trips have been to Asia (India, Thailand, Cambodia), Latin America (Peru), Europe (Bosnia, Northern Ireland) and the Caribbean (Jamaica). These usually take place in late January just before the beginning of the second semester. Note that field trips are at an additional cost to the programme fee, to reflect the fact that some students prefer not to take up this option.
For the PGCert award it is compulsory to pass at least one of the modules Theory of Practice or Practice of Theory and at least 30 other credits. For the PGDip award students must pass 120 credits from the taught modules, including both compulsory modules
Teaching, learning and assessment
Teaching and learning strategies are grounded in theory, case studies and field-based experience. The programme concentrates on the development of intellectual knowledge and the cultivation of academic skills including synthesis, analysis, interpretation, understanding and judgement. The programme also focuses on the practitioner’s approach, with reference in particular to:
* the setting in which they work (poverty, conflict, power, vulnerability, capability, risk, urbanisation, environmental change and the history and dynamics of particular places, their people and their society)
* the set of approaches they adopt (community mobilisation, aid, advocacy, governance, risk reduction, livelihoods, humanitarian protection, accompaniment and empowerment)
* themselves (the personal motivations that drive and shape their own vocation, their particular personality, temperament, strengths, abilities and weaknesses).
The intention is that a deeper understanding of these settings will enable students to move beyond rigid professional boxes to become more self-aware, knowledge-based practitioners able to work flexibly around a variety of problems in different situations of poverty, armed conflict and disaster.
Quality
The external examiner’s report, 2005/6 concluded that:
‘It is clear from discussions with students and former students that this MA is more than an academic exercise. It has a culture that students embrace, and in which they flourish in often very different ways. I know of very few courses that are spoken about by students in this way. Such a culture is difficult to create.’
In 2001 the programme was recognised by the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education:
‘Oxford Brookes University has gained an international reputation for pioneering education and training for humanitarian aid workers. Combining innovative practice-based study with a multi-disciplinary academic approach, its unique emphasis on educating humanitarian practitioners for work in war, political violence and disaster is a model for others.’
In the last Research Assessment Exercise the School of the Built Environment gained grade 4 (out of 5*)
