Description
The Master’s in Regional Innovation and Experimentations within the programme Geography, Planning, Environment and Development is both vocationally and research-oriented.
This dual identity is founded on:
- a pedagogical mission based on iteration over experimentation and theorisation;
- permanent and open dialogue between the professional world and the world of research.
This hybridity is a reflection of the scientific involvement of the pedagogical team, who are truly invested in projects developed with partners in regional authorities, in the volunteer sector, in companies etc.
The strong links between the professional and theory-driven elements of this course are a response to emerging demands expressed by the teaching team as a whole (university lecturer-researchers, researchers, professionals).
There is a need to train geographers capable of constructing flexible measures that can meet the needs of regional organisations who currently find themselves in a state of chronic transition and uncertainty.
The ‘Environmental Mediation’ subject pathway, which draws on a strong partnership with the Bordeaux Higher National School for Architecture and Landscape (École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Bordeaux), tackles the environment as a socio-ecological complexity that is both a category for public action and a powerful driver of public imagination. Between these two poles, the role of mediation is to organise the creation and implementation of processes for new projects, and to combine these with the necessary democratic discussion and debate.
Objectives
This Master’s programme aims to produce: researchers and experts in devising and implementing public policies and stakeholders in regional management. The programme aims to teach students the necessary foundations on which they will be equipped to develop a capacity for critical and innovative thought.
Teaching is based on the mingling of the knowledge, skills and experience brought by researchers, university lecturer-researchers, students and project leaders (project designer and contracting authority).
This Master’s offers a programme of study that is:
• theory-driven and focussed on expert knowledge, ethics and processes of mediation, and the monitoring and characterisation of innovations within the fields of knowledge construction and environmental action.
• methodology-based, organised around questions surrounding the production and analyses of geographical information and the critical analyses of issues linked to patterns of representation and narrativising;
• practice-driven within the workshop course units (from reception of a works-project order to a procedure for joint analysis, implementing a project based on a process of mediation).
Regional experiments are the central object of this Master’s programme, which is set firmly within the context of practices and theories of spatial and regional action, as well as the fields of Critical Visual Studies, Critical GIS Sciences Studies, and Critical Political Ecology Studies.
Reflexivity is fundamental to this; that is to say, the capacity to handle, work with, and absorb controversial issues. This programme of study has a flexible status, so as to allow room to adjust and adapt in response to social demand.
Training content
Two years of study: Master 1 (M1) and Master 2 (M2)
The course units in this programme insist on the construction of critical and ethically rigorous approaches to questions of the environment and the organisation of the world as seen by scientists and regional stakeholders.
Students learn to position themselves as skilled experts and to adopt an ethically sound stance in real-life situations. They will be competent in managing the relationship between certainty and uncertainty. The programme of study is organised around the dual acquisition of knowledge and skills, the good command of different mediation processes and the different methods for implementing mediation scenarios.
Master 1: First year of two-year Master’s programme
Master 1 is made up of a common core curriculum focussing on methodology-based teaching and also theory-based teaching (theoretical perspectives on stakeholders, epistemology of textual and iconic languages, emerging regional innovations and their propagation, critical and radical cartography and mediation processes). These course units revolve around experimentation workshops.
Master 2: Second year of two-year Master’s programme
In Master 2, the common core curriculum occupies a smaller place in the programme and is constructed around questions of expertise and of the changing roles of images and written accounts in regional communication patterns (looking at the role of the imaginary and at visual studies). The experimentation workshops use case studies to exchange and compare the views, methods, knowledge and skills of students, professionals, sponsors and university lecturer-researchers. Professional participation plays an important role in this programme, particularly in the formulation of works project orders.
Dissertation
Semester 4 is entirely reserved for the dissertation element, which revolves around all the work and projects carried out over the course of the previous semesters, as well as the students’ personal professional ambitions. Consequently, the dissertation can take a different form according to students’ individual professional ambitions (documentary or web documentary, infographic, digital platform, report, thesis project etc.). The dissertation must be defended in an oral examination.
Entry capacity
The entry capacity of this programme is limited to 18 students.
Access condition
Find information regarding enrolment procedures and the supporting documents to be provided, according to your profile and your level of studies :
Validation of prior learning or activities (VPL-VAP)
Possible après discussion/validation avec l’équipe pédagogique pour des professionnels en reprise d’étude. La VAE est possible.
Trainings
The internship is optional.
Career pathways
This programme aims to train researchers/professionals of a high level, sensitive to the questions of research and development being raised in the current climate of societal and ecological change. They will be capable of constructing alternative approaches and new methods for research, action and communication.
This programme also aims to shape professionals who are capable of keeping abreast of scientific research, making contributions when necessary and drawing on the results of this research in their professional activity.
- There are employment opportunities as: assignment officers, project managers and research managers within regional authorities, research departments, associations and NGOs (nationally and internationally).
- There are employment opportunities in professions related to higher education and research.
