Human Security Concentration

Human security threats are wide-ranging, manifesting in critical problems of deprivation, indignity, and fear that are also deeply interconnected. Human Security students learn to develop forward-thinking solutions to such problems by using analytical tools that are people-centered, and that tackle linkages between threats through comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis and innovative multi-sectoral collaboration across the fields of development, human rights, and security. By focusing on people as the central unit of analysis, human security approaches mark a shift away from traditional state-centered threats and responses, instead emphasizing peoples’ lived experiences, as well as participatory or “bottom-up” solutions that foster resilience and sustainability. Students benefit from SPIA’s multidisciplinary faculty and its highly regarded Ford Institute for Human Security, one of the oldest human security programs in the country.

The flexible design of this concentration enables International Development students to use SPIA’s comprehensive course offerings in order to study how development intersects with other issues, for example: the empowering tools offered by human rights for achieving Sustainable Development Goals such as education, poverty, hunger, and inequality; the importance of environmental sustainability goals for development work to prevent root causes of human displacement and ill-health; the role of development in fostering peace, reducing interpersonal violence such as human trafficking and gender-based violence, as well as political violence and armed conflict; and the value of intersectional and gender analysis across human security threats. 

Download Plan of Study beginning Fall '26 »