Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in History with Politics

at Goldsmiths, University of London United Kingdom

This unique international laboratory programme brings diverse individuals into collaborative research, acknowledging the challenges of creating original, performer-driven theatre in today's complex, globalised culture.

Why study MA Performance Making at Goldsmiths?

• Studying at Goldsmiths gives you access to all the cultural stimulus that London offers, allowing you to enhance your practice and develop compositional, critical, technical and management skills and strategies for forging independent and self-motivated careers. Our graduates work as practitioners, teachers and cultural leaders worldwide.
• The Masters will help you conceive, research, construct and deliver your ideas, and articulate what motivates them. You will study with distinguished international artists and scholars. The emphasis throughout will be on encouraging collaboration across disciplines and cultures, and on contextualising practice within its social, political and architectural environment.
• You’ll undertake physical training, scenographic/environmental exploration, and hands-on introduction to technologies (lighting, video and sound), to support your composition and artistic experimentation. You will identify your own practice within the historical and contemporary field, and write critically and creatively.

This Masters programme in Cultural Studies offers you the opportunity to engage with some of the key theorists and the significant debates in Cultural Studies, spanning from its inception in Britain in the mid-1970s, to the present day. Cultural Studies has developed a distinctive set of concepts and methodologies to help better understand social institutions and practices, objects, items, and their circulation in consumer culture. Cultural theory permits close analysis of topics including race, youth, music, fashion, and the creative economy, and embraces the history of sexuality, emotions and affects. This course will consider current permutations on key topics such as music, sound and technology, national identity, the rise of ‘public feelings’, the cultural dynamics of precarity and austerity, art, and cultural expression for the new feminist activism.

Why study MA Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths?

• Explore the impact and influence Cultural Studies has on a wide range of research interests, not only in the English-speaking world, but also internationally. The programme will teach you about a range of Cultural Studies methodologies that you can then apply in your own writing and research. It will also include a Critical Ethnography Afternoon where students explore the place of this kind of research in the cultural studies tradition.
• Examine the effect media technologies have on the cultural practices of production and consumption. As the course has a strong focus on new developments in sonic technology, this might include, for example, emerging local music scenes. This might also involve mean a focus on changes in fashion consumption, such as platform providers, and the role of influencers.

This MA will enhance your narrative skills as an editor of fiction for film and television. This Masters is a pathway of MA Filmmaking, so that in addition to your specialised training you will collaborate with students across all specialisms on a variety of film projects.

Experienced tutors and guests provide expert guidance designed to enhance the flow of your individual research, experimentation and artistic achievement. You will complete your degree by working in your specialist role on a major production in the final term.

What we offer

• The programme is housed in a new purpose-built media facility equipped with state-of-the art teaching spaces including a film studio equipped with Arri lighting and Green Screen facilities. Edit suites are equipped with Avid Media Composer and tuition is offered, giving the opportunity to gain Avid Certified User accreditation (Media Composer 101 and 110). Edit suites, screening rooms and sound studios are linked via Avid’s industry standard ISIS storage area network.
• You will work to professional standards using high-end digital formats. You will also learn sophisticated postproduction workflow techniques, gaining a wealth of experience in off-line editing and an understanding of how this fits in with on-line editing, visual effects and picture grading.
• In addition to your specialist area, you can attend classes in related disciplines. This framework is designed to stimulate collaborative practice by providing you with a breadth of filmmaking knowledge combined with a high level of expertise in your chosen filmmaking discipline.

The MSc Psychology of the Arts, Neuroaesthetics and Creativity is the first postgraduate programme in the world for the scientific study of aesthetics and creativity.

At the intersection of the arts and the sciences, the programme introduces you to the psychology and the cognitive neuroscience of how humans generate new ideas, how we appreciate beauty, and how we form preferences.

Aesthetic and creative decisions are relevant in the visual and the performing arts, and in many applied and commercial contexts, ranging from clinical interventions to curating exhibitions, from dance choreography to marketing and advertising. Based in the Department of Psychology, in collaboration with Computing, Media and Communications and the Institute of Management Studies, the course builds critical knowledge, research and communication skills across the arts and the sciences, centred around two key topics: the psychological and brain mechanisms of making (Creativity) and appreciating (Neuroaesthetics) art. Conducting a research project with an interdisciplinary focus will prepare you for a research career in aesthetic or creative science, working in the creative industry, or to develop your artistic practice.

Goldsmiths is uniquely placed to offer this programme, with an internationally renowned reputation in the arts and the sciences. Existing courses combining art and psychology often have a largely therapeutic focus and rarely cover the psychology of aesthetic appreciation or creative cognition, in a broader profile. In contrast, business-oriented courses in marketing, advertising and consumer psychology often lack adequate scientific training in experimental psychology or cognitive neuroscience methods, which is required for a scientific approach to aesthetics and creativity. Optional modules based in the Departments of Media & Communications, Computing, and the Institute of Management Studies will complement and challenge the scientific perspective, acknowledging the richly diverse, unique and culturally-specific nature of human aesthetic and creative practice.

Photography is a key medium of the 21st century. We record every aspect of our lives with smartphone cameras, consume knowledge through image flows, are exposed to constant surveillance via security cameras while feeding computer databases with our social media images.

Photography itself is undergoing a radical transformation in its encounter with CGI (computer generated images) and AI (artificial intelligence). This MA programme gives practitioners and theorists the opportunity to research and develop the new boundaries of image-making made possible by technological change within the context of post-industrial culture.

The programme joins theory and practice, equipping you to develop and achieve highly in the new image media culture. The practice uses both digital and analogue technology, still and durational photography, as well as the study and production of interactivity.

It also allows for specialisation in photography and/or electronic arts – which, in addition to still photography, can include interactive, durational, and internet work – but encompasses a broader interpretation of practice.

You'll look at the meaning, production, and distribution of images in their present and historical contexts, and at the relationship between theory and practice in image production and management.

Do you want to advance your knowledge of contemporary art and pursue a professional career in the field of curatorial practice?

Curating refers to a wide range of activities including the care of collections and the development of exhibitions, festivals, screenings, digital platforms and more. Curators engage with historical knowledge and respond to urgent social issues, staging culture as a way of bringing together multiple publics.
Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths has been at the forefront of curatorial research for well over a decade, helping to redefine the profession. Drawing from this research, taught by leading curators and researchers, BA Curating combines a strong grounding in art history and contemporary cultural theory with the development of practical know-how and industry experience.

Why study BA Curating at Goldsmiths?

• Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths is internationally renowned for its research on Curatorial Practice and you will be learning from leading theorists and practitioners.
• You will study compulsory modules on curatorial history, theory and practice alongside option modules in art history and visual culture that allow you to focus on your particular interests.
• You will be mentored to develop the know-how and practical skills necessary to practice as a contemporary art curator through a number of practical assignments as well as an industry placement in your second year.
• You will develop your ability to work collaboratively and will work with your peers in your third year towards your degree show.
• You will be supported to develop student-led projects and will have access to our dedicated Curating Room to host your events.
• You will benefit from the rich programme of events at Goldsmiths as well from world-class exhibitions at the newly opened Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art.
• Our London location means you’ll never run out of galleries, events, museums and visual culture to explore in the capital.

The MA Cultural Policy, Relations and Diplomacy is a trans-disciplinary programme that addresses the theory and practice of cultural policy, cultural relations, and cultural and public diplomacy.

This broad area of study and the terminology applied to it is fluid and expanding. Having culture as the underlying thread, the programme explores areas such as:

• Arts policy and management
• Globalisation
• Cultural relations
• Public diplomacy
• Cultural and arts diplomacy
• External communications
• Place branding

This will provide a unique perspective into this field of study, and will examine topics such as mobility of cultural practitioners, cultural identity, intercultural dialogue, mutuality, propaganda, soft power, hegemony, influence and perceptions.

Goldsmiths' location provides you with a unique experience of living in a multicultural world city, which is of great relevance to the study of cultural policy, relations and diplomacy.

This MA is designed for students interested in new ways of exploring and understanding the social world through the use of visual, sensory, and other experimental approaches. You’ll study sociological issues alongside innovative methods and gain the tools needed to examine, represent and intervene in the social world.

Why study MA Sociology (Visual Sociology) at Goldsmiths?

• You’ll join students from a wide variety of backgrounds, including art, design, anthropology, media and communications, cultural studies, geography, and sociology.
• You’ll develop the ability to carry out empirical research and present it publicly in a variety of media and materials. You’ll engage with sociology as an inventive research practice, using creative research methods to address classic and changing sociological problems.
• You’ll be introduced to the range of debates in visual research and encouraged to build on these by using visual, sensory and inventive methodological practices to carry out critical social research in your areas of interest, whether this is science and technology, contemporary capitalism, gender and sexual cultures, race, human rights, globalisation, or other aspects of social life.
• Combining lectures and seminars with practical sessions and workshop-based projects, this MA will help you develop a hands-on approach to sociological research. You’ll gain a skills base in methods which could be used in public sector contexts, art or media research, design or commercial application.
• As well as presenting your ideas through writing, you’ll have the opportunity to produce different outputs, including film/video, photography, sound and multimedia pieces. You’ll also have the opportunity to organise and curate some of this work in an exhibition.

The MA Global Political Economy explores the dynamics of our changing world. You will work in small groups with world class experts at the Political Economy Research Centre (PERC), as well as across a number of other Goldsmiths departments, and learn how to hold the world up to scrutiny.

Why study MA Global Political Economy at Goldsmiths?

• Learn about the political economy of ecological break down, the challenge of building a sustainable world, and how to make these issues central to the analysis of politics and economics.
• Learn about the relationship between global financialised capitalism, global inequality, and the possibility of a sustainable future.
• Work closely with academic experts in small-group workshops and seminars.
• Learn in a truly interdisciplinary programme that allows you to see the global political economy from a variety of perspectives.
• Choose from a wide variety of options to build the bespoke degree programme that best suits your interests and ambitions.
• Join the series of job talks from insiders at policy Think Tanks, NGOs and the private sector.

This is a pathway of the MA Applied Anthropology & Community and Youth Work, aimed both at international applicants who may not need a British National Youth Agency qualification and those who want to become specialists in community development.
This MA is a second pathway to the MA Applied Anthropology and Community and Youth Work. It was launched in 2012 as an option for international or home students who do not need an National Youth Agency qualification and for those who want to specialise in community development. A third pathway, the MA Applied Anthropology and Community Arts started in 2015.

The three pathways entail different placements but are taught together, providing much opportunity for exchange of ideas and collaboration amongst students.