Circular Economy

Course description

Engaging with a ‘circular economy’ means moving away from a wasteful, linear economic model where resources are extracted, manufactured, used, and discarded. A circular economy strives to design out waste, with products and materials kept in use for as long as possible at a high value. Beyond the need for design and system innovations, a circular economy also means investigating how to change the way we consume and use goods and services, both locally and globally.

On this interdisciplinary programme, you will have the opportunity to gain skills and knowledge of circular economy in order to support communities, businesses, and policymakers to create a more sustainable and equitable future. The circular economy is an opportunity for inventive thinking, researching, and acting on urgent global challenges such as the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and unequitable resource use.

The core courses will focus on both practical and theoretical approaches to:

- the fundamentals of a circular economy

- designing for a circular economy

- the circular economy from a business perspective

- the evolving field of circular economy

- responsiveness to the climate and environmental crisis

You will be able to shape your learning to meet your own circular economy interests and objectives, particularly through option course selection and your final project. This programme offers you opportunities to think differently, examine our finite global resources in the context of our changing world and society, and to act as an agent of change.

This programme is aimed at recent graduates and early- to mid-career professionals from across the globe, and from a diverse range of backgrounds, areas of study and skill sets. We are particularly interested in students that are not afraid of challenging the status quo, who are independent thinkers, and want to make a difference in their communities and organisations.

If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, you will be given the oppportunity to explore and nurture your circular economy ideas for disrupting and rethinking how we currently design, make, and use resources in the world. The programme is designed to support student entrepreneurship, with an opportunity for you to explore your own circular business ideas through coursework and the final project.

Please note, this programme is not a general Economics or environmental economics programme. While a ‘circular economy’ has economics in the name, we study ‘economics’ in a broad sense; we will not be engaged in a formal study of economics and we do not have any core economics courses. If you want to focus your studies on economics or economics and the environment, we encourage you to find out more about an economics degree programme at the University of Edinburgh.

This programme is part of an interconnected portfolio of postgraduate study in the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI).

EFI supports interdisciplinary teaching, learning and research that is focussed on complex global and social challenges. Our programmes are taught by academic experts from many different subject areas.

As an EFI student, you will develop creative, critical and data-informed thinking that cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries. You will have the space to think deeply about questions linked to your own passions and professional goals and will develop a project based on an issue that you care about.

As well as knowledge specific to your area of study, studying at Edinburgh Futures Institute will give you the skills and understanding you need to become a creative, confident and critical citizen in a fast-changing world.

These include:

- core data skills

- data ethics

- the ability to interrogate issues of global scope using methods from across disciplines

- creative and analytic approaches to knowledge

You can join us regardless of whether you already have skills in the use and application of digital data.

Subjects

• Environmental science