MSc in Circular Economy

Students on this programme study the following:

• A portfolio of ‘shared core’ courses (40 credits) which teach the essential, critical and hands-on data skills, climate change understanding, enquiry methods, ethical and creative capacities needed to underpin your programme-based studies.
• Core courses (30 credits) specific to your programme.
• A project (taking the form of a 20-credit ‘integration and project planning’ course, and a 40-credit final project).
• A wide choice of short 10 credit optional courses (60 credits), at least two of which must be on topics related to your programme, with scope to study across the entire portfolio

Core courses

You will take the following 10 credit shared core courses, which are compulsory for students on the MSc Circular Economy.

If you do not have any grounding in climate change/environmental studies this course must be taken.

• Understanding the Climate Crisis

And choose one of:

• Insights through Data
• Text Remix

You will also take the following 10 credit shared core courses, which are compulsory for Edinburgh Futures Institute students across programmes:

• Interdisciplinary Futures
• Ethical Data Futures
• Representing Data OR Building Near Futures (Choose one)

On all these shared core courses you will be in cross-disciplinary teams with students from other programme areas. You will learn to collect, manage and analyse computational datasets, and to use emerging methodologies for mapping and designing the future. You will also learn the fundamentals of data ethics, and how to use creative skills in the analysis and representation of data-informed and qualitative inquiry.

Optional courses

Edinburgh Futures Institute offers a wide portfolio of over 40 optional courses taught by academic staff from across many discipline areas, including topics associated with your programme. The exact courses will vary from year to year. In 2023-24 the courses associated with your programme may include:

• Circular Economy in the Built Environment
• Waste Law in Circular Economy
• Introduction to Life Cycle Assessment
• Sustainability on Both Sides of the Lens

Optional courses from across the wider portfolio will cover a range of themes and topics, such as:

• Critical perspectives on how new technologies are changing society
• Data, programming and research skills that advance the skills taught in the EFI shared core
• How new and rapidly changing technologies and data sources are transforming the future of democracy
• What the future of education might look like
• How narratives drive the way we understand the world
• Bringing service design and service management together to build change in a data-driven society
• Current challenges and futures for the creative industries

The project

In your final project, you will be able to apply your learning in depth to a domain, issue or concern which drives you. It could be based on your own personal or professional interests, defined by your employer, sponsored by one of EFI’s industry, government or community partners, or aligned to one of our research programmes. You can submit your final project report as a written piece of work, or combine text with other forms as appropriate – for example, video, visualisation, a digital artefact, performance, code. You will provisionally identify your project topic relatively early on in the programme, and work on it in parallel with the taught courses. We expect projects to take an interdisciplinary approach which connects with the creative, data and future-oriented nature of the EFI core.

Part-time and full-time options

Full-time students on the programme take these courses in one year. Part-time students take the same courses as full-time students, over either two or three years:

• For the two-year version, students take 80 credits of courses in year one and 100 credits (including the project) in year two.
• For the three-year versions, students take 120 credits of courses over years one and two (with up to 80 credits per year in each year), and then take the project (60 credits) in year three.

Students can also study towards a Postgraduate Certificate or Postgraduate Diploma:

• Students have two years to undertake the Postgraduate Diploma, taking the same taught courses as students on the MSc, but not the project. They will take a total of 120 credits of courses - between 40 and 80 in each year.
• Students have one year to undertake the Postgraduate Certificate, taking 60 credits of courses, including between 10 and 40 credits of the EFI ‘shared core’ courses, between 20 and 50 credits of programme-specific courses (either the programme core courses or optional courses), and up to 30 credits from the broader suite of EFI optional courses.

On successful completion of this programme, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• The key concepts and principles of the circular economy and its diverse range of applications, from local to global scale.
• The societal and political landscapes in which a circular economy could operate.
• Circular economy design, utilising a design thinking perspective.
• The business landscapes in which a circular economy could operate.

You will be able to:

• Analyse facts and situations and apply creative and inventive thinking to develop the appropriate circular economy solutions.
• Demonstrate analytical thinking to synthesise and appraise key issues for creating a more circular economy.
• Effectively communicate circular economy ideas to a range of audiences with different levels of knowledge and expertise.

The multidisciplinary nature of the MSc Circular Economy and Edinburgh Futures Institute gives graduates key skills to face the challenges of the modern world and a rapidly changing environment. As the impact of the resource and climate crisis continues, governments, industries, and businesses are looking for employees with specialist circular economy skills and are creating roles that will help deliver a more regenerative, less resource-intensive economy.

Graduates will be well-equipped to enter the job market and meet the needs of this growing professional path. There are large global companies that have already embraced circular economy strategies, in addition to public sector and government organisations which are looking to embed circular economy into policies, strategies, procurement, and community projects. The International Labour Organisation predicts a significant increase in jobs by 2030 due to the global shift to a more circular economy.

The core elements of the programme address the data and higher-order skills we know are important for the future of work, confident and critical citizenship, and a thriving, just society.