MSc in Global Leadership and Peacebuilding

Our Global Leadership and Peacebuilding MSc examines the mutually reinforcing links between global leadership, peace and society, especially in developing nations. Through this blended learning programme, which offers both face-to-face and online modules and which supports wholly online study where applicable, you will learn to understand the huge significance of global leadership processes and outcomes in peacebuilding efforts in the developing world and the impacts they have on society.

Next-generation leaders must be able to thrive across different socio-cultural contexts while achieving success in organisations. In a dynamic global context with a wide array of diverse actors and stakeholders, global leaders need a unique set of skills and must be uniquely prepared. The Global Leadership and Peacebuilding programme seeks:

• To deepen students understanding of the different patterns of global leadership that have underlined social, political, economic and peace processes and outcomes in developing societies and across the world;
• To advance peacebuilding knowledge - conceptually and operationally - on the process of leadership and global problem-solving in developing societies and across the world;
• To develop in students deep analytical skills in response to global challenges in the 21st century.

Students learn to understand the enormous complexity of global leadership – the multiple cultures, multiple actors, multiple levels of operation, and the interconnections among all of this. What will this mean for those trying to respond across all these levels to build peace in multiple ways? What are the situations, contexts and cases that best reflect this complexity? Who are the actors that demonstrate the capacity to manage this complexity? What are the tools for effectively managing this complexity?

Key benefits

• The MSc programme offers an innovative approach to the interdisciplinary study of global leadership and peacebuilding: it is the only MSc programme in the UK where global leadership is studied about peace and security, peacebuilding and societal development
• The programme’s blended learning format allows for a range of learning experiences and options: the core and compulsory modules are a mix of online learning and intensive face-to-face classroom experiences; optional module choices are available for those studying face-to-face or for online learning
• Students have the opportunity to interrogate key leadership concepts challenge mainstream assumptions, and understand how global leadership has unique, intense and far-reaching complexities that defy standard narratives around: what leadership is; how assertions of influence occur; why certain (effective and ineffective) leaders emerge; and what constitutes the relationship between institutions and leadership
• Students can transform their perspectives on global leadership and undergo personal development to translate their ideas into change-making opportunities within their contexts
• There are many opportunities to network with the African Leadership Centre’s global network of renowned academics, practitioners, activists and institutional partners that include universities, international organisations, and research and policy institutions from across the world, with teaching offered by key intellectuals and experts on global leadership and peacebuilding from both the global north and south
• Students have access to a broad selection of optional modules across King’s, with emphasis on the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy

Duration: One year full-time, September to September, two years part-time