Governance of Sustainability (MSc)

Career prospects

Acquired skills and competences

After completing the programme, you are able to analyse complex sustainability issues from both a natural sciences and governance perspective. You will know how to integrate these perspectives in order to develop and implement solutions. You will have acquired a wide variety of skills, including qualitative and quantitative research skills, and transferable skills.

Alexander van Oudenhoven

Lecturer biodiversity & ecosystems, Faculty of Science, Leiden University

“Nature-based solutions are a hot topic in science and policy making. Students will obtain the skills to study biodiversity and human wellbeing outcomes of such nature-based solutions. They will also understand the role of different stakeholder perspectives and roles within collaboration processes. With this skills combined, our students will be able to act as a knowledge broker between the rapidly advancing scientific domain and the policy-making arena, both locally and (inter)nationally.”

Career

The programme prepares you for governance and strategic positions at (semi-) government institutions or private sector on sustainability issues and to take leading broker-roles connecting different actors. You can be a change agent on sustainability, through the synthesis of different scientific fields and non-scientific knowledge and insights. Thus, graduates will contribute to the development of integrated solutions needed to achieve a sustainable society and contribute to the implementation of these solutions.

We conducted a survey with potential (inter)national employees. The vast majority of the respondents (93%) agreed with the following statement: “To tackle issues of sustainability, we need academics who combine scientific knowledge with knowledge of governance, such as public-private cooperation, policy processes, political decision-making, stakeholder analysis and network management.”