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The University of Edinburgh: Child Protection Data Futures (Online Learning)

Institution The University of Edinburgh View institution profile
Department Edinburgh Futures Institute View department profile
Web efi.ed.ac.uk/study/postgraduate
Study type Taught

Summary

A new, interdisciplinary degree with the Edinburgh Futures Institute

The MSc programme in Child Protection Data Futures aims to build data skills and connect disciplines for safer futures for all children. The current child protection system is fragmented and disjointed, with multiple data sets, sources, standards and capabilities. This means that it is difficult to join up data, obscuring the scale of complexity and challenges within the child protection system. Without high-quality data that can guide policy, funding and interventions, children continue to be exploited and abused, and perpetrators of abuse have impunity.

Child protection data is also changing. With the advent of new technology like extended realities and generative AI comes new online forms of harms. Public services and frontline practitioners are experiencing for the first-time enormous volumes of data, particularly around the creation and sharing of Child Sexual Abuse Material. Those that work across the child protection system therefore need to be prepared to not just build better foundations and standards to commission, collect and analyse existing data, but be ready to future-proof the system against harm in new spaces and in new ways.

This programme recognises that complex data insights are needed for a complex system, and that every actor and discipline within the system has a role to play. Through this interdisciplinary and challenge-driven programme, students will learn how to conceptualise and actually use child protection data to create change.

This programme will increase knowledge and understanding of:

  • risk and protective factors;
  • the prevalence and incidence; and
  • the theories and promising programmes and policies that exist to prevent and respond to child abuse.

Importantly, the programme will provide students with the specialist skills to make an impact, with a value-driven, socially responsible contribution to tackling child maltreatment and youth violence globally. Expert speakers, case studies and real-life examples will bring the child protection system to life, and students will have many opportunities to synthesise this learning through activities that apply theory to reality.

Postgraduate study at the Edinburgh Futures Institute

This programme is part of an interconnected portfolio of postgraduate study in the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI).

EFI supports interdisciplinary teaching, learning and research that is focused on complex global and social challenges. Our programmes are taught by academic experts from many different subject areas.

As an EFI student, you will develop creative, critical and data-informed thinking that cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries. You will have the space to think deeply about questions linked to your own passions and professional goals and will develop a project based on an issue that you care about.

As well as knowledge specific to your area of study, studying at Edinburgh Futures Institute will give you the skills and understanding you need to become a creative, confident and critical citizen in a fast-changing world.

These include:

  • core data skills

  • data ethics

  • the ability to interrogate issues of global scope using methods from across disciplines

  • creative and analytic approaches to knowledge

You can join us regardless of whether you already have skills in the use and application of digital data.

MSc

Edinburgh Futures Institute

Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) is a large, new and future-facing part of the University of Edinburgh. We give students the chance to explore different and ambitious ways of thinking, collaborating, learning and working.

Rather than being a discipline-based School, our cross-sector, interdisciplinary approach draws together the very best of the University of Edinburgh to enable students to learn and connect across many fields and areas of expertise.

We are collaborating with industry, government and communities to build project-led, flexible and innovative degree programmes linked to leading research and enquiry from across disciplines.

We are opening up education in new ways …

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