January Start MSc and Professional Certificate Courses
January Start Postgraduate Courses
Applications are open for the following January Start Courses. You can start your application by clicking the apply button at the bottom of each course catalogue below.
Full MSc Degree (Online, 90 credits, 18 months)
Professional Certificates (On Campus, 10 credits, 4 Months)
Application Deadline: 19 January 2026
How to Apply
Comprehensive Application Process Guide and FAQs
Required Documents
- Academic transcripts of your current/previous degree(s)
- English proficiency certificate (if relevant). Please refer to the UCD English language requirements.
- The name and contact details of one academic referee (Uploading an actual reference letter is NOT required.)
- The application fee - €70.
Entry Requirements
- A primary degree (Honours Bachelor Degree, (opens in a new window)NFQ Level 8 or equivalent) with at least Second Class Honours Grade 1 (2H1) in any discipline.(2H1 is equivalent to 60 per cent, B minus or 3.08 GPA - in American system: B or 3.00 GPA)
- English language requirements. (Applicants who obtained a previous degree from an English-speaking university may be exempted from this requirement. Refer to the UCD Global site.)
- Students meeting the programme’s academic entry requirements but not the English language requirements, may enter the programme upon successful completion of UCD’s Pre-Sessional or International Pre-Master’s Pathway programmes.
MSc Sustainable Development
Programme Overview
The UCD M.Sc. in Sustainable Development in partnership with UN Sustainable Solutions Network (SDSN) education division the SDG Academy, offers cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary, and trans-disciplinary learning for the SDGs. SDSN has a unique mandate to support the UN System. This M.Sc. provides students with a unique experience in virtual classrooms with leading academics and global thought leaders in policy and practice. There are also opportunities for excellent research placements and careers in sustainable development. The core elements of the Master's require students to study the SDGs at the national level, city level, and through an SDG project (Thesis).
The programme will include a wide range of electives to cover the SDG agenda, such as social justice, climate change, industrial economics, food systems, and public health.
Programme Structure (January Start)
The MSc Sustainable Development is a 90-credit programme.
All students must complete 60 credits from taught modules, as well as the SDG Project (30 credits), over the course of the programme. These include two core modules:
- POL42080 Global Classroom (Autumn, 10 credits)
- PLAN40390 Sustainable Cities (Spring, 10 credits)
Recommended Workload
| Trimesters | Months | Typical Workload |
|---|---|---|
| Spring | Year 1: January-April | 20 credits (incl. PLAN40390 Sustainable Cities) |
| Summer | Year 1: May-August | No Workload |
| Autumn | Year 1: September-December | 20 credits (incl. POL42080 Global Classroom) |
| Spring | Year 2: January-April | 20 credits |
| Summer | Year 2: May-August | POL42370 SDG Research Project (30 credits, No lectures) |
Further Details
Professional Certificate in Quantitative Text Analysis
What Will I Learn?
Students on this course will complete the POL42050 Quantitative Text Analysis module.
Overview
Computational text analysis has become increasingly popular in political science in recent years. With the vast availability of text data on the web, political scientists increasingly view quantitative text analysis (or “text as data”) as a valuable approach for studying various forms of social and political behaviour.
This module introduces political science students to the quantitative analysis of textual data. It covers the theoretical foundations, practical applications, and technical implementations of these methods using the R statistical programming language. The module also explores advanced techniques, including word embeddings, speech transcription, and machine translation. Additionally, students will engage with the Hugging Face Python infrastructure, a cutting-edge resource for implementing transformer models and other state-of-the-art natural language processing methods.
Each session integrates lectures with practical, hands-on exercises to apply these methods to political texts. These exercises address practical challenges at each stage of the research process. Most of the methods follow a three-step framework: first, identifying texts and units of analysis; second, extracting measurable features from these texts and converting them into a quantitative feature matrix; and third, analysing this matrix using statistical techniques such as dictionary construction and application, scaling models, and topic models. Students will learn to apply these steps to various types of texts.
Building on this foundational framework, students will also gain hands-on experience with advanced techniques such as word embeddings, transformer models, and generative AI. These approaches will provide insights into the latest developments in text analysis and their applications to political science research.
Duration and Timetable
- The course starts on 21 January and finishes on 22 April (12 weeks with a mid-term break on 11 and 18 March).
- Lectures are scheduled at 9:00-11:00 on Wednesdays on Campus.
- The final assignment is due in mid-May.
Professional Certificate in Programming for Social Scientists
What Will I Learn?
Students on this course will complete the POL42340 Programming for Soc Scientists module.
Overview
This module provides an introduction to computer programming using the object-oriented language Python. Python is the most popular programming language at the moment (August 2025), the most popular among data scientists, and is generally known as an excellent language to learn programming. A basic grounding in programming will allow you to automate mundane and repetitive tasks related to text and files, large data sets, web scraping, or develop complex simulations, all applications that are typical for a social scientist.
In this module, the main application will be a social simulation, which will be developed in teams. While all students will learn the basic programming skills, different students will be assigned different aspects of the overall program, while sharing their experience with the rest of the class. This will allow us to cover a wide range of aspects of the system (file manipulation, user interface, simulation model, visualisation of results, etc.), while keeping the overall effort manageable.
Classes will consist of lectures and lab sessions to practice with Python and related development and collaboration tools, as well as brainstorm and feedback sessions on the overall project, the development of the social simulation.
The target audience of this module is students who have no or very limited prior experience with Python programming or computer programming in general.
Duration and Timetable
- The course starts on 19 January and finishes on 20 April (12 weeks with a mid-term break on 9 and 16 March).
- Lectures are scheduled at 15:00-17:00 on Mondays on Campus.
- There are MCQ exams and the final assignment is due in early-May.