Sustainable Digitalisation - apply to our new master’s programme!

Our new master’s programme in Sustainable Digitalisation will start in August 2024. Elina Eriksson and Daniel Pargman (me) worked with the proposal for a new master’s programme for the better part of two years and in August next year we will welcome the first students who come to KTH Royal Institute of Technology to study that programme. The programme has a web page where you can read more about it and applications open today. The last day to apply is January 15, 2024. Besides the official information on that webpage, I will here write about a few behind-the-scenes facts that could be of interest to prospective candidates but can’t be found elsewhere.

The program aims to recruit two distinct groups of students: KTH bachelor’s students who are interested in sustainability and digitalisation and students with a bachelor’s degree from other universities in Sweden, Europe or further away. We hope to get a good mix of these two groups. As for KTH students, we aim to primarily recruit students from four engineering programmes; Media Technology, Computer Science, Information and Communication Technology and Electrical Engineering. As for students from elsewhere, they need an equivalent or “nearby” bachelor’s degree in order to be accepted to the programme. The application date mentioned (January 15, 2024) does not apply to KTH students who choose what master’s programme to study later in the spring. We aim to accept a limited number of students the first 1-2 years and to then scale up the program to later accept around 50-60 students.

While our research group has taught and conducted research in the intersection of sustainability and computing for more than 10 years, we will spend part of this year developing several exciting new courses that will be given for the very first time during the next academic year (2024-2025). The programme is two years long (120 ECTS credits) and consists approximately of 60 credits of compulsory courses in the intersection of sustainability and computing, 30 credits of elective courses that students themselves can choose and the program finishes with a 30-credit master’s thesis. KTH students might have less freedom to choose optional courses freely if they aim for a double degree (a master’s in science as well as a Swedish engineering degree).

We are super excited about all the new courses we are developing and very much look forward to accepting our first batch of students in August next year! We need to do a lot of work before that and while some of that work is super exciting, other parts has to do with developing courses and the program so that everything adheres to all the rules and regulations and fits with how things are done at KTH and at other Swedish universities (which is necessary but not as exciting). 

The programme is interdisciplinary and we have been very inspired by a concept called The Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Matter. This means we will work with co-creative processes in some of the courses - including in the program-integrating course that runs in parallel with the program for the full two years and where we will meet up twice per term. This also means students themselves will master the use of co-creative tools and processes and will take responsibility for some of the learning activities themselves. 

We hope to get a nice mixed group of students to come to KTH next year and we can assure you that we do not shy away from serious discussions about everything Sustainability and how digitalisation can and does make a difference both for good and for bad. We invite you to join us in an ongoing discussion where we can work together to figure out how digitalisation can and should be harnessed for good!