This one-year taught postgraduate programme offers students the opportunity to use design practice, thinking tools and methods to engage critically with the changing social, economic and political imperatives of contemporary culture.

Students on the programme will engage with, examine, critique, and propose contemporary and emerging definitions of design practice and citizenship by addressing political and technological issues faced by today's society as it moves into the future. This will include exploration of present societal arrangements for the generation and dissemination of wealth, social opportunity, scientific knowledge and technical advance, and the provision of services by the State, the public, private and voluntary sectors, and the organisational forms associated with these. In doing so, design practice will demonstrate a relevance and value to the inhabitants of society through the formulation of language (visual, material, and conceptual), the generation of new tools, methods and strategies, and a critical vocabulary capable of creating opportunities for dialogue between various social, technological, economic or political constituencies.

Graduates of this degree programme will be capable of making a contribution in areas as diverse as public policy, private sector enterprise, citizen or social advocacy, public sector service provision, social enterprise or the voluntary sector. In particular, graduates will possess the disciplinary expertise conferred by design practice combined with the discursive capacity for critical debate normally associated with the social sciences or humanities.