Core modules
The course is structured on a 50/50 basis with half of the modules each year being taken in each half of the course: Global Sustainable Development (GSD) – Design.
In the first year, core modules will provide a critical understanding of the ‘three pillars of sustainable development’ and the core principles of design theory:
- Economic Principles of Global Sustainable Development
- Environmental Principles of Global Sustainable Development
- Social Principles of Global Sustainable Development
- Design in Context
- Introduction to Design Practice
- UX with Service Design
- Visual Practice and Curiosity
You will also study the core Global Sustainable Development Project module, giving you the chance to see how the principles of GSD apply to a real case affecting a local community.
The second year will consist of a combination of core and optional core modules. The GSD optional core modules provide you with the opportunity to engage with a key issue in sustainability either:
- Health and Sustainable Development
- Security, Sovereignty and Sustainability in the Global Food System
- Inequalities and Sustainable Development: Inclusion and Dignity for All
You will also choose optional modules with a GSD focus from within or outside the School for Cross-faculty Studies.
In the core Design modules, you will learn different methods of approaching design:
- Systemic Design
- Social Design
And the optional core modules offer the chance to apply those approaches to either Materials, Space or Society.
You may choose to study abroad for part of your second year at Monash University. During Term One at Warwick, you will study 50% of the workload outlined above. In terms two and three at Monash University you will study modules with an approved sustainability and design focus. These modules will be pre-approved by the GSD Department.
In the final year you will take the core Dissertation and Major Project modules, as well as modules that examine The Business of Design and Design Research. You will also study optional modules with a GSD focus from within or outside the School for Cross-faculty Studies.
Year One
Why and how can economics address issues of global sustainable development? In this module, you will learn about the relationship between economic activity, social inclusion and environmental sustainability, and critically analyse the economic theories that underpin sustainable development policy interventions and how those theories impact upon policy design.
Information correct as of 2024-25 year of entry
This module focuses on the natural science of the world’s most pressing environmental issues. We will cover well-known topics like climate change and biodiversity loss and less prominent problems like biogeochemical flows. You will receive training in scientific methods and will investigate environmental systems first hand through experimental approaches. You will evaluate existing governance and management efforts and develop innovative responses of your own. You will learn how to write a policy briefing and create a policy briefing paper and policy pitch, aimed at a specific decision-making audience.
Information correct as of 2024-25 year of entry
This module examines concepts that enable you to analyse and interpret social and political issues related to global sustainable development. You will learn to understand and evaluate pressing social and political dimensions of sustainability at national and international levels.
Information correct as of 2024-25 year of entry
This is an exciting, innovative, and practical module. It is designed to give you research and analysis skills and to enable you to apply the theories from your other first-year core modules. You will learn how to research sustainability by designing and developing a group project on the topic of sustainable transport, under the guidance of an academic supervisor. Staff from across the GSD Department with expertise in transport policy as well as research methods teach this module.
Information correct as of 2024-25 year of entry
Explores the diverse theories and practices of designing, the designed world, the impact of design on people, and the challenges and ambitions that motivate designing. You will examine the contextual backdrop to the formation of design as discourse, practice and profession, question the globalisation of design, the similarities and differences between different forms of designing, design professions, and everyday designing. You will develop critical and creative capabilities for responding to the designed world. You will learn from experience and practice, from visiting diverse locations, and encountering innovative designs and designers who have worked on national and international projects.
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
Explores design practice from holistic and reductionist perspectives, their relationship and critiques, and discovers diverse forms of thinking and making in design. You will explore design as a multi-disciplinary endeavour through considerations of impact on personal practice and methodologies, social and life-centred design as well as systemic design. This module challenges you to consider design practices from the artefact to the system level and gain an understanding of positionality of design and innovation on a micro, meso and macro level.
You will explore how design has impacted the world, solved and created problems and how design processes evolve to respond to the world's ever more complex challenges. This is done through collaborative and individual design challenges which will allow you to explore and test diverse and inventive methods to design and system thinking. You will undertake a journey of unlearning, experimenting, play and curiosity. This is a studio module which manoeuvres you into designerly ways of thinking, making and knowing.
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
Introduces you to the distinct yet overlapping disciplines of Service and UX Design from a digital development angle. You will learn about common and emerging research and processes from the industry through live briefs, which will guide you from research concept to realisation. The module will challenge you to use design methods to conceptually and visually capture the social paradigm of designing and you'll learn how to navigate the needs of diverse groups who might have been at mismatch in current systems. You will develop and propose a UX digital or hybrid solution to a service problem.
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
Introduces you to the visual research and making methods commonly found in Graphic and Interactive Design to support you towards building a professional and academic design skillset and mindset. This module aims to develop your capabilities in visual reasoning, compositing, curating and rendering to support your further practice and prepare you for a specialisation process starting on L5.
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
Year Two
You will also choose two modules from:
Viable and equitable solutions in health and sustainable development require interdisciplinary and critical thinking. The first part of the module will introduce you to fundamental concepts of global health governance and health systems, whilst acquainting you with key global health priorities like drug resistance and mental health from the perspective of global sustainable development. The second part of the module will focus on cross-cutting issues that shape and impact on global health.
Goal 2 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims to end hunger, end all forms of malnutrition, and ensure sustainable food production systems. However, the world population will likely increase to nearly 10 billion people by 2050. After decades of positive change, the incidence of malnourishment is again on the rise, global stocks of key food are contracting, and it is currently more expensive to buy food than for most of our planet’s modern history.
This module addresses these significant challenges by encouraging students to adopt a 'food systems approach' in responding to the imperative agendas of food security, sovereignty and sustainability. The module is taught in collaboration with researchers from across various disciplines at Warwick.
This module focuses on how inequalities shape our societies, economies, environments and politics. Starting with the question ‘Does inequality matter?’, you will critically reflect on the United Nations' decision to integrate inequalities into the Sustainable Development Agenda. You will then explore six different dimensions of inequalities (work, politics, environmental justice, societal discrimination, automation and globalisation, empowerment) and gain an understanding of the complexities of these problems. Finally, you will appreciate the challenges faced by today’s policy makers who aim to address issues of inequalities while taking into consideration all three pillars of sustainable development.
This module introduces you to systemic practice towards understanding how to research a system and its models, how to read and scope a system, how to map and synthesise it and scope design interventions in multiple areas of leverage towards systems change. The module is linked to real life contexts of local and regional communities.
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
Fosters your development in becoming a 'designerly' agent for change through engagement with your local and regional communities. You will learn a range of approaches to participatory design, social action and entrepreneurship through investigating philosophies, methodologies, and case studies. The aims of this module are to give you the opportunity to explore and test methods, approaches and frameworks relating to design and systems thinking within an interdisciplinary context. This will shape your emerging specialist design practice and help you build your own designerly methodology.
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
Explores approaches to materials through a transdisciplinary lens and an international perspective. It combines theoretical and practical approaches that call on both the sciences and the humanities to consider and interact with materials. You can pursue a diverse series of routes assessing the lives of materials through their qualities and transformations and will learn from a range of people who work professionally with materials in their academic and professional careers.
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
Aims to provide you with a transdisciplinary approach to spatial design and management that encourages you to think about geographical 'space' as a more dynamic and populated environment than it might traditionally have been considered. You will work with the understanding of agency from your own perspective but also those of others in the human and more-than-human environment.
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
A deep dive into world building and a holistic practice-led enquiry into how society and its systems are designed. You will research, analyse and design your own future city. This module aims to develop your sense-making capabilities through design methods and practices by fostering your design mindset and skillset in contexts of designing for a sustainable and regenerative future.
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
Final Year
In this module you will bring together all your learning and experiences on the course – the theoretical concepts and principles and your practical know-how – to address a specific sustainable development problem of your own choosing. This will be a problem that concerns you most and which you would like to tackle.
You will be supported by an academic supervisor to devise a suitable project and to undertake research to explore the issue, taking a transdisciplinary approach to your investigation in order to produce an original research output. This may be a concept paper, a practical project, a film production, a long essay, an advocacy campaign...use your creativity!
You will design a strategy for disseminating your findings (for example at a conference presentation, via online publication or an article in a journal, or at a public meeting that you have arranged). This provides you with an opportunity to have your voice heard in a forum where it matters and could have lasting impact.
You will inhabit a range of methodological approaches throughout this module and will be encouraged to experiment with traditional and novel methods of design research to understand the importance of serious play.
This will allow you to more fully understand and hone your own research methods, relevant to your own interests and project aspirations. Ethical issues will be embedded throughout the module, encouraging you to consider, address and critique your own standpoints and perspectives. This module will also work with you to explore and understand structures for research funding.
This module explores how designers, in a variety of contexts, act entrepreneurially to negotiate a range of economic, social, and environmental factors that impact their practice. You will explore, and compare how different design businesses operate, the skills, mindset, and capabilities of those that lead them, the challenges that both leaders and businesses face, and how they address them. You will reflect on this knowledge, and how it can inform your own future career, to formulate a plan for your own personal and professional development.
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
This end of course project challenges you to bring all your learning together, and to apply it to a significant design challenge requiring descriptive, analytical, critical and creative responses. This project faces global challenges, focussing on systemic challenges relating to sustainable innovation goals, whilst using established and inventive methods. This will give you the opportunity to apply and reflect on your acquired knowledge and methods.
Optional modules
Optional modules vary from year to year. Example optional modules include:
Information correct as of 2025-26 year of entry
Read more about our optional modules.Link opens in a new window
Co-curricular Certificates
We offer a range of unique certificates outside of the curriculum as a way of continuing your professional development.
In the first year, you can complete certificates in Climate Literacy and Professional Communication.
Explore our range of certificates
