The University of Edinburgh, Interdisciplinary MSc THE CITY
Inquiries are welcome from prospective students
interested in the interdisciplinary, graduate programme in global metropolitan
studies hosted by the School of Arts, Culture & Environment and the School
of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh
What
is the city? A form to be designed? An image to be projected? An
object to be conserved? A community to be resourced? A structure to be
diagnosed? A problem to be solved? An event to be narrated? And how do we
approach the city? By submitting to it, celebrating, resisting, subverting,
jamming? We invite applicants with backgrounds in the humanities, social
sciences, or creative arts, including architecture, fine art, human geography,
cultural studies, sociology and planning. Past students have come from a wide
range of academic backgrounds and have been drawn to the programme by the opportunities
it offers to work on the contemporary city in an interdisciplinary way, and to
explore critical, textual and extra-textual (visual, material, performative)
forms of thinking and research. Each MSc The City cycle is oriented around a theme
relevant to contemporary urbanism as a way of framing the collective aspects of
the programme. A new cycle begins this year with a focus on the sites, issues
and challenges of urban MARGINALITY.
Theme 2010/11 Marginality: 2010-11 marks the
beginning of the City Programme’s exploration of the theme of urban
marginality. This theme will be the focal point for our investigations and speculations
and will provide the imaginative and moral infrastructure for our efforts. The
conjunction of mounting misery and stupendous affluence is clearly evident in
the cities of advanced and advancing societies throughout the globe. Understanding
urban marginality and bridging urban divides are central concerns of our time:
it was the focus for the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2009 and
is the theme for the 2010 United Nation’s Habitat World Urban Forum.
Programme: The City Programme
is structured around two core seminar courses and two core studio courses. The
studio courses are structured as problem-based pedagogies in which students from
differing disciplinary backgrounds work collaboratively on the ‘Marginality’
theme. Students also elect two Option courses, one in each semester, from the
offerings listed below. After completing the coursework and having received
approval to proceed, students undertake the ‘Urban Research Project’, an
individually supervised research dissertation.
Professor Jane M Jacobs
Chair in Cultural Geography
Institute of Geography
School of GeoSciences
University of Edinburgh
Drummond Street
Edinburgh EH8 9XP
+44 (0)131 650 2515
