Master’s (MASC)

A master’s built to navigate the complexities of the future. Not the past.

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Overview

The world of work doesn’t respect subject boundaries. So why should your education?

We have designed this master’s to equip you with the hybrid skills, connected knowledge and interdisciplinary (ID) mindset you need to futureproof your career.

The modern workplace requires you to be comfortable with unfamiliar and complex challenges. Engaging with complexity, navigating the dynamics of human behaviour, and making sense of a data-rich world demands quantitative and qualitative skills – be they statistical, computational, communicative, or visual.

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The programme

Core components

Learn how to work across a range of domains and graduate from the MASc with a toolkit of analytical skills that employers need.

Hybrid skills

The workplace today is inherently interdisciplinary and data-rich. At its root are three deep systems: language, statistics, and visual media. Analytical skills in these vital areas are typically taught in isolation.

Your ability to work at speed and scale will be supported further by instruction in a coding language like Python or R.

ID Lenses

The MASc equips you with two interdisciplinary (ID) lenses, each built on robust conceptual knowledge:

Complexity, as it relates to systems, networks and forecasting; drawing on mathematics, philosophy and the natural sciences
Culture, in terms of human behaviour and organisation; drawing on the social and behavioural sciences

Capstone

Under the supervision of an LIS Faculty member and enriched through engagements with external professionals, you’ll explore a problem that is of professional, social, or academic importance.

The outcome should be an intellectually rigorous product that is of genuine value. This should become a key part of your professional portfolio; that will help guide and support you in the next steps of your career.

Beyond academics

Unlock your career

LIS is deeply integrated with the world of work. During your time at LIS, you’ll have multiple opportunities to engage with a diversity of organisations from across the LIS Network, including:

Enrichment of the academic curriculum by employer organisations
Insights into the contemporary challenges faced by these organisations
Employer contributions to our extra-curricular programme focused on developing your professional skills
Invitations to LIS events including workshops, hackathons and panel discussions

Module content

The programme is comprised of seven modules. Two are conceptually oriented (ID lenses); four are primarily skills-based (hybrid skills); and the final module will be your capstone project. The course content listed below is indicative, subject to approval, and may change ahead of the master's commencing in 2022.

Engaging Complexity and Mapping Systems

This module will introduce you to complexity theory and its application to dynamic systems. Drawing on perspectives from across the natural sciences, you’ll learn how self-regulating systems maintain their integrity (or fail to) in the face of externally mediated shocks.

Culture and Collective Intelligence

This module is about the cultural and social technologies that human beings use to coordinate themselves as groups. Learning how human beings leverage social and cultural structures to bring about collective intelligence can give us deep insights into how effective organisations are built and improved.

Cracking the Code

This module will teach you to programme. If you’re a novice coder, the language you learn will be Python; if you can code in Python already, you’ll learn another language of your choosing.

The Right Word

This module will draw on disciplines grounded on the basis of language; linguistics, philosophy, psychology of language, and literary studies. You’ll also learn about language with reference to the interplay between language and visualisation and how language structure shapes our thinking about statistics.

Everything Counts

This module will teach you methods of numerical estimation and data analysis. This will focus on descriptive and inferential statistics from Bayesian and frequentist perspectives. You’ll also learn about numerical methods with specific reference to how complex quantitative systems can be visualised and communicated.

Re: Form

This module addresses visual media through disciplines that have image as their primary subject matter; art theory, videography, photography, visual anthropology, and art history. Image data will also be explored from statistical and linguistic perspectives.

Capstone Project

This is an individual project that allows you to engage with a problem of your choice under the close supervision of a faculty member. This may be a self-contained project that ends on completion of the programme, or it may be a way in which you identify a professional project that you can engage with across your career.

Who’s the MASc for?

The cohort will come from a range of academic and professional backgrounds. What they will have in common is a recognition that the working world is changing – this requires an interdisciplinary toolkit that can be applied to the diversity of complex professional challenges that are shaping our future.

Individuals on the MASc want to:

Upgrade their analytical skills (quant. and qual.)
Develop transferable ID tools
Identify and pursue future career options
Enhance their professional network
Satisfy their intellectually curiosity

Key Information

Admissions

Applications are now open.

Fees

Home students: £15,000
International students: £25,000

You can find out more about our course fees, financing options, and support available through getting in touch with masters@lis.ac.uk.

Please note, in future years, fees for continuing students may be subject to an inflationary increase.

Regulation

LIS has been granted degree-awarding powers for its undergraduate programme by the higher education regulator in England, the Office for Students (OfS). These powers need to be extended in order for us to award a master’s degree. We have started this regulatory journey and will keep you updated as we move through this process.

International students

An international student is someone who does not have “settled” status in the UK and would need to apply for a visa to study in the UK.

We have a sponsorship license which means we are able to welcome international students. Please get in touch if you have questions about your status in the UK or your application as an international student.

English language

The LIS master’s is taught in English. To derive full benefit from and succeed in passing, you must be able to understand and express yourself in English (reading and listening, speaking and writing). If you’ve been taught and assessed in English or have been working in the English language for the past two years or longer, you do not need to provide an English language qualification.

FAQs

How do I apply?

Applicants apply online, directly to LIS, via this form. Once you’ve submitted your application, the admissions team will aim to get back to you within four weeks.

What are your entry requirements?

To be considered for a place on our MASc, applicants must have achieved (or be expected to achieve in 2022) a minimum of a 2:1 UK bachelor’s degree in any discipline, or an overseas qualification of an equivalent standard. Applicants must also demonstrate a strong aptitude for interdisciplinary problem-solving through a Critical Reflection piece, which forms part of the application form.

What is a Critical Reflection?

The Critical Reflection is a written piece that’s submitted as part of your application to the MASc. In this Critical Reflection, we’re looking for you to demonstrate strong interdisciplinary problem-solving aptitudes, specifically the ability to:

Identify and explain multiple lenses on an issue, phenomenon, or problem
Explore how multiple perspectives can be integrated
Select appropriate sources and, where relevant, supporting media
Communicate clearly in writing

You’ll be asked to select a problem, issue, or phenomenon you’re interested in, and describe how an interdisciplinary approach could be used to address or explore it. Your answer will need to be uploaded as a pdf document, with a minimum of 500 words and a maximum of 750 words. You can supplement your written answer with any form of media that might help your argumentation – for example, photographs, diagrams, tables showing numbers, charts showing data, calculations, and code script. This should all be incorporated in your pdf upload, either in-text or through hyperlinks.

When is the application deadline?

The deadline for MASc applications is Monday 20^th June 2022 for non-Home students, and Monday 12^th September 2022 for Home students. For more information about our admissions process or a more detailed definition of Home and non-Home students, please see our MASc Admissions Policy on our Policies Page.

Faculty

A group of world-class academics, entrepreneurs, and educationalists have come together to form the teaching team at LIS. You can view the team here.

At the helm of the master’s learning experience is Dr James Carney who, alongside the members of the LIS faculty, boasts collective expertise across a wide variety of disciplines.

Dr James Carney

James has worked in various academic positions across the UK and Ireland. Recently, as a Wellcome Trust Fellow at Brunel University London, James used methods from machine learning and experimental psychology to establish the therapeutic impact of fiction on anxiety and depression.

James is also a founding director of Texture AI, an intelligence company that uses deep learning and linguistics to evaluate commercially significant data sources.

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Contact us

Get in touch

If you’d like to find out more about us, or if you have any specific questions about our core or custom programmes we’d love to hear from you.

Telephone enquiries

0203 409 1912

Email Enquiries

hello@lis.ac.uk

Master’s (MASC)

Overview

The world of work doesn’t respect subject boundaries. So why should your education?

The programme