The MSc in Disaster Interventions and Humanitarian Aid is an innovative and unique course that will assist social work practitioners, humanitarian aid workers, health professionals and volunteers to work effectively with victim-survivors of (hu)man-made and/or ‘natural’ disasters. You will acquire the skills to engage with the problems facing those working in disaster interventions, including family reunification, safeguarding children, adults and other vulnerable groups and rebuilding sustainable, resilient communities post disaster. This includes exploring disaster mitigation, preparation and prevention strategies within a community engagement and coproduction framework to create new, long-term responses owned and endorsed by communities.

You will be encouraged to learn from each other and innovate in disaster responses by exploring complex disaster issues in the safety of the classroom using videos, simulations and small group exercises. Your skills will be enhanced further through participation in a field-based learning opportunity involving a period of shadowing practitioners within humanitarian agencies, emergency responders and government departments responsible for deploying emergency personnel. Here, you will learn about agency policy, procedures and practices during deployment.

Placements

There will be an observational field-based learning opportunity (FBLO) in the emergency services, voluntary agencies or local authority resilience teams, giving you the chance to shadow practitioners to learn how they deal with the complex dilemmas they face and how policy is used to address these.

This FBLO will give you the opportunity to learn what happens in agencies responsible for emergency responses, and to learn about agency protocols, procedures and the legislation to be observed in emergencies in the UK.

You will be asked to prepare an organisational case study to reflect on what you have learned and to present these learnings back to the study group.

Career

Graduates from this course are likely to be employed in the voluntary, NGO and statutory sectors concerned with disaster responses and humanitarian aid distribution, locally, nationally and overseas, e.g., the Red Cross, Red Crescent, Oxfam, Save the Children. Also, there are opportunities for employment in the United Nations and its associated agencies such as UNWomen, UNDP, UNICEF, WHO and FAO.