Governance of Violence (MSc)

What is the nature and scope of violence? Who offends, and in what context? Who are the victims? And how can we design suitable intervention and prevention strategies? In this track, you will be familiarised with the many faces of violent offending, to provide the knowledge and tools to understand, and ultimately, prevent violence.

Part of

Crisis and Security Management (MSc)

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What does this master's programme entail?

Violence is a core feature of any society. The study of violence is relevant not only because of the impact on victims, but also because the resulting ripple effect goes far beyond the initial act, and can create a climate of fear and insecurity, as well as potentially undermine national security. The track Governance of Violence will focus on interpersonal violence (i.e. violence taking place between individuals), the most common types including physical violence and sexual violence, and the way in which society responds to such violence.

In this track you will:

Study the origins, correlates, mechanisms and social contexts of violence, coupled with prevention and intervention measures aimed at curbing the impact of violence on society;
become acquainted with the key psychological, sociological and criminological perspectives used in studying interpersonal violence, and key prevention and intervention measures;
become familiar with the most commonly used conceptual frameworks explaining the drugs-violence nexus, the relationship between firearms and drugs as well as prevention and counter-strategies on the local, regional and global level.

Courses

In four in-depth courses you will study the origins, correlates, mechanisms and social contexts of violence, coupled with prevention and intervention measures aimed at curbing the impact of violence on society.
Together, these courses will allow you to become familiar with the nature and scope of violence; the heterogeneity of violent offending and victimisation; and knowledge of intervention and prevention strategies on how to respond to, and ultimately, prevent violence.

In this course, we will focus on definitions of violence, who offends, what violent offending looks like, and how we can explain historical and geographical differences in violence globally. You will become acquainted with the key psychological, sociological and criminological perspectives used in studying interpersonal violence, and key prevention and intervention measures.

This course focuses on a subtype of violence that has been at the center of public debates in recent years: gender-based violence. You will become acquainted with key sociological, criminological, and psychological perspectives on how gender shapes the causes and effects of violence. This course analyses gender-based violence as an intersectional phenomenon, which must be understood in relation to factors such as race and class. Moreover, we will address this subject through the lens of politics and policy: what explains that gender-based violence is understood and addressed differently over time and in various geographical contexts? What do we know about effective intervention strategies to prevent gender-based violence or monitor its harmful consequences?

In this course, we start from the idea that violence in society tells us something about how that society functions, the values and norms it holds, and how it treats its people. In other words, violence exposes the ‘pressure points’ of our society. In this way, the study of violence is the study of social processes. This approach to violence stands central in the exploration of various intervention and prevention mechanisms of violence.

In this course we will look at relational proximity between victims and offenders of violence. Specifically, we will focus on the nature, extent and aftermath of domestic violence in national and global contexts as well as the implications and governance strategies for practice and policy. We will look at relational proximity through an interdisciplinary lens where different perspectives in theory, research and practice are brought together to understand this complex phenomenon.