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Online-Safety, Safeguarding, Privacy and Identity

Education and training

Discover our Postgraduate courses and training opportunities.

MSc Data, Policy and Society

This MSc is a unique collaboration between the Sociology & Criminology (City School of Policy and Global Affairs) and the Computer Science Departments (Centre for Human Computer Interaction Design (HCID), providing students with the practical research skills and knowledge to critically understand and ethically assess how data is used across a multitude of industries.

The social and technological are merging in arguably unprecedented ways. Computational and data- and AI-centric systems are pervasive in contemporary life, just as the technological capacities for enumeration, modelling and prediction are now entangled with virtually everything from people's daily interactions to political and democratic structures. Not only is computation playing a greater role in online, social interaction, it is shaping how publics, industries, practitioners, researchers, and politicians make sense of and act in the world.

The MSc Data, Policy and Society invites a new kind of professional. One both trained in the technicalities of data-centric systems and skilled in the application of social research and critical scholarship. Knowing how to design fairer and more equitable digital technologies and flourishing societies, demands both an understanding of how the data and digital operate and the ways that such technologies remediate or enact the social.

The MSc Data, Policy and Society is taught by specialists across the social sciences and human-computer interaction. You will be equipped with a richer critical and ethical understanding of today’s computing industry, the social, political, and economic relations it increasingly helps scaffold. This is significant, given the growing interest tech companies or government bodies, for instance, have in understanding the social impact of their products or policies, and, therefore, employing individuals who understand and can draw on a range of data analysis and research methods that are rooted in sociological knowledge, human-computer interaction, politics and ethics.

This innovative and forward-facing programme will provide you with a range of methodological skills and theoretical insights that can be applied in positions in industry or government such as social policy advisers and qualitative/quantitative data researchers in government, data-focused think-tanks and NGOs, user experience analyst, data policy adviser, data and reporting analyst, data insight manager, data strategy and performance officer.

COSPI Future Professional Training Programmes

In addition to our pioneering Masters degree, we are also working towards delivering professional training programmes and CPD courses. Please check back on this site or register your interest in receiving updates on these by emailing us: COSPI@city.ac.uk