Online Postgraduate Certificate / Diploma and M.Sc. in Managing Risk and System Change

• Course Director:
  • Prof. Siobhán Corrigan
• Contact Details:
  • Email: managingrisk@tcd.ie
• International Student Course Queries:
  • Erin Paullin (Global Officer, School of Psychology)
  • Telephone: +353-1-896-1015
  • Email: Erin.Paullin@tcd.ie
• Course Duration
  • Postgraduate Certificate (1 year part time) / Postgraduate Diploma (1/2 years part time) / M.Sc. (2/3 years part-time)
• Closing date for Applications:
  • 31st July 2026
• Next Intake:
  • September 2026
• ECTS Credits:
  • M.Sc. (90) / P.Grad. Dip (60) / P.Grad. Cert (30)

Why this programme? — Practical, Credible, Career-first

• Built for people who already work in safety-critical or heavily regulated environments (healthcare, aviation, finance, defence, IT, emergency services, pharma, policing, emergency services and more). 

• Taught by a top-class, research-active team and informed by industry-led collaborative research — you learn frameworks that have been tested in real organisations. 

• Fully online with live evening sessions and all lectures recorded — study around shifts, not the other way round.

Study Mode: Fully online — weekly evening lectures + recorded materials and active online community.

Which Award Suits You Best:

• Postgraduate Certificate — 4 core modules; ideal if you want a focused, career-relevant qualification without committing to a full master’s. Perfect for immediate workplace impact. 
• Postgraduate Diploma — 7 modules; deeper study including socio-technical design, statistics & action research methods — excellent if you want stronger evidence-based skills for organisational change.
• M.Sc. — Full taught programme plus research dissertation: develop research-practitioner capability and contribute original, workplace-relevant research. Option to top-up from the PgDip within five years.

What You Will Learn:

• Lead and manage complex change programs with safety and human factors at the centre.

• Design resilient socio-technical systems that reduce failure and improve performance.

• Use real data, statistics and action-research methods to ask better operational questions and produce actionable results. 

• Translate workplace experience into publishable, practice-driven research (M.Sc. dissertation)

Assessment:

No traditional sit-down exams — assessment is continuous and workplace-embedded: case reports, mini-projects, reflective essays, online dossiers and collaborative learning. Great if you’re juggling work and study.

For Further information on the different courses please see the following below:

Postgraduate Certificate - https://www.tcd.ie/cihs/courses/postgraduate/postgraduate-certificate/ 

Postgraduate Diploma - https://www.tcd.ie/cihs/courses/postgraduate/postgraduate-diploma/ 

M.Sc. - https://www.tcd.ie/cihs/courses/postgraduate/masters-in-science/