Please note due to the great demand for our programmes early applications are assessed when received and dealt with promptly. Therefore it is advisable to make early applications for an early response. If you do not yet have your final degree results this will not hinder your application as we are happy to issue conditional offer letters in such circumstances. This course, which includes a work placement, provides international state of the art knowledge and specialised analytical skills in the field of local development and innovation. The programme is intended to prepare participants to act as managers, administrators and professional advisers in the public, private and community sectors. Aims The programme is designed to balance theory and practice and provide students with an understanding of how local communities operate and the skills to play a critical role in developing innovative programmes to facilitate social and economic development at a local level. The programme explores current debates around local development, innovation and governance. It aims to give students a multi-disciplinary research-based knowledge of key processes and issues at local and regional level arising from social, economic and political change in the global economy and to understand institutional and policy responses to such change.

Graduates are eligible to take up positions where they will have specific responsibility for local development objectives as graduates and will often work with high degrees of autonomy within larger structures. The programme is not intended to produce narrow local development specialists but rather to equip graduates to critically engage with a wide variety of disciplines and sectors and facilitate and manage the place making agenda, i.e. the shared development of better places.