Ateneo de Manila University
Master in Transdisciplinary Social Development
Format
Full timeDuration
24 monthsTuition fee
2000 EURThis program provides students with solid grounding, relevant theoretical and practical tools, and innovative thinking skills needed in taking direct action on and creating high-impact solutions to the complex issues of equity, justice, and peace confronting the communities and peoples of the Global South. MTSDev underscores the transdisciplinary value of cooperatively producing knowledge, participatory means of building capacities, mutual modes of determining ownership, and inter-generational sharing of benefits with and among the subjects of development. As a transdisciplinary programme, MTSDev emphasizes the contribution of local communities, cultural bearers, traditional leaders, and indigenous elders alongside academics and practitioners in producing concepts, theories, categories, and understandings of development. These inclusivist epistemological positions were instrumental in the articulation of transdisciplinarity, an approach to knowledge production that dissolves conventional disciplinal boundaries while cultivating integrative approaches to teaching and learning around real-world issues and guided by the principles co-production, co-benefits, and co-ownership. In consonance with the collaborative spirit of transdisciplinarity, MTSDev brings together agents from varying spheres and scales of development work in teaching future social development practitioners, intellectuals, and leaders inclusivist models of developmental engagement.
The primary aim of the programme is to professionalize the field of development work, management, and interventions with a postgraduate degree anchored on the theories, methods, and practices of transdisciplinarity. In achieving this aim, the program should be able to produce social development practitioners with the following expertise: ○ excel by taking leading positions in careers encompassing diverse developmental organizations worldwide such as intergovernmental and governmental bodies, international and domestic non-government organizations, people's organizations, social action and civil society groups, corporate social responsibility, academe, educational formation initiatives, and related work. ○ innovate social development strategies and practices that promote co-creation, co-ownership, and co-beneficial technologies ○ demonstrate a high level of competency in managing social development projects and programs supported by systems thinking, participatory research, and integrative work ○ create transformative public policies drawn from collaborative engagements of multiple academic disciplines, sectors, and communities ○ design high-impact, rights-based, and ecologically sustainable solutions to social development challenges in local and international settings Learning experience is built around local and global field exposures, fieldwork activities workshops, project design and implementation, action research, engagements with multilateral institutions, and modular class formats.