Master in Digital Policy

University College Dublin (UCD) is a world-renowned university located in Dublin, Ireland. Founded in 1854, it is one of the oldest and largest universities in the country, with a current student population of over 34,000. UCD offers undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate programs across a broad range of disciplines, including arts, humanities, business, law, engineering, medicine, and science. The university is particularly well-known for its programs in agriculture, veterinary science, and architecture, and is also a leader in research in areas such as nanotechnology, information technology, and food science. The campus itself is situated on 350 acres in the south suburbs of Dublin, providing a picturesque and spacious setting for students and staff. Facilities on campus include state-of-the-art lecture theaters, research labs, libraries, sports facilities, and accommodation options for students.

With support from Microsoft Ireland, UCD’s School of Information and Communication studies has estabished the Microsoft-UCD Digital Policy Programme with the goal of building digital policy training and capability in Ireland and Europe. The innovative programme mixes the abstract and the applied with core modules from the School of Information and Communication Studies and optional modules from other Schools in the College of Social Sciences and Law (COSSL) and Computer Science. This programme introduces students to basic concepts and issues in digital policy, giving a historical and critical understanding of how to theorise digital objects and environments by learning to situate them in perspectives such as platform capitalism, governance, data infrastructures, information analytics, interface critique and software studies. The MSc in Digital Policy is designed to prepare graduates for careers in evaluating, implementing, and studying core topical, theoretical, and methodological issues that arise in digital policy today. The course will take a multi-disciplionary approach to investigating the institutional and public policy dimensions of the prevalence of digital technology, as well as the underlying social conditions (economic, political, and cultural) and public/private sector contexts that give rise to such technologies and their governance.