Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Politics and International Relations

at Goldsmiths, University of London United Kingdom

Understanding the relationship between brain, cognition and behaviour is one of the biggest challenges the scientific community is currently working on. Computational cognitive neuroscience is a young and exciting discipline that tackles these long-standing research questions by integrating computer modelling with experimental research.

This Masters programme will foster a new generation of scientists who will be trained in both neuro-computational modelling as well as cognitive neuroscience. Its core topics include:

• Creating computational/mathematical models of neurons, circuits and cognitive functions
• The fundamentals of cognitive neuroscience (brain mechanisms and structures underlying cognition and behaviour)
• Advanced data analysis and neuroimaging techniques

The programme is suitable for students from a variety of disciplines including – but not limited to – psychology, computing, neuroscience, engineering, biology, maths and physics. Students with no prior programming experience are welcome.

Graduates of this Masters will acquire a unique set of complementary skills that will make them extremely competitive in securing research or analyst positions in both academia and industry.

It’s really important for us that you graduate with a set of core digital journalism skills so half of the degree focuses on the computing side of the discipline and half on media and communications. This means you get a holistic MA, where you study the foundations of digital journalism and practise it in its most current forms.

You’ll have the chance to study multimedia and interactive journalism, look at interactive documentaries, digital reporting, and video journalism. You’ll also learn coding, so you can get to grips with using algorithms and data sets, and do social network analysis to monitor what’s going on behind the screens.

Through our partnerships with BBC news labs and The Times’ development team, we make sure we’re keeping up with industry but also working with it.

We want you to reimagine the medium while you’re here, so you get the chance to specialise in your own area of interest for your final project. This could be anything from an interactive website to a video production using interactive story telling and text.  We offer a lot of support when it comes to the coding side of the course. A boot camp before the start of the programme gives you an introduction to some of the techniques and languages.

What you go away with are the core skills for news writing, video, and computational techniques and some amazing industry contacts.

The MSc Data Science will provide you with the technical and practical skills to analyse the big data that is the key to success in future business, digital media and science.

The rate at which we are able to create data is rapidly accelerating. According to IBM, globally, we currently produce over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data a day. This ranges from biomedical data to social media activity and climate monitoring to retail transactions. These enormous quantities of data hold the keys to success across many domains from business and marketing to treating cancer or mitigating climate change.

The pace at which we produce data is rapidly outstripping our ability to analyse and use it. Science and industry are crying out for a new generation of data scientists who combine the statistical skills of data analysis and the computational skills needed to carry out this analysis on a vast scale.

Studying this Masters, you will learn the mathematical foundations of statistics, data mining and machine learning, and apply these to practical, real-world data.

As well as these statistical skills, you will learn the computational techniques needed to efficiently analyse very large data sets. You will apply these skills to a range of real-world data, under the guidance of experts in that domain. You will analyse trends in social media, make financial predictions and extract musical information from audio files.

The programme includes:

• A firm grounding in the theory of data mining, statistics and machine learning
• Hands-on practical real-world applications such as social media, biomedical data and financial data with Hadoop (used by Yahoo!, Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, IBM, Amazon, and many others), R and other specialised software
• The opportunity to work with real-world software such as Apache

Why study MA Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths?

• You may be writing regularly; you may be returning to it after concentrating on your career. Whatever your background, if you're serious about your writing, we can help you to develop your practice.
• Our students bring with them a lively range of interests, cultures and experiences. We welcome students of any age who share the drive to take their writing seriously.
• You’ll have the chance to experiment with different forms – poetry, the novel, short story and life writing - as well as to specialise in one of those areas -  and you will receive expert guidance in each field. Read work by our students.
• Some seminars will be taken by visiting writers who will talk about their work, introduce you to different theories of creative writing and engage you in discussion about their writing. Recent visitors have included Ali Smith, Caryl Phillips, Claire Keegan and Daljit Nagra.
• We host weekly readings and discussions organised by our Writers Centre, together with occasional visits from editors, literary agents and organisers of literary projects.
• Several graduates of this programme have gone on to be award-winning influential poets, among them Emily Berry, Abigail Parry, Nick Makoha, Katrina Naomi, Richard Scott and Jack Underwood who now teaches at Goldsmiths. Our Fiction and Life Writing graduates are similarly successful, Luiza Sauma, Tom Lee, Elaine Castillo, Sarah Leipciger, Anthony Joseph amongst others.

Why study MA Black British Literature at Goldsmiths?

• This degree is a world first. There’s nowhere else you can study black British writing in such an in-depth way – in the actual country where the writing is produced. We trace diasporic and aesthetic routes and draw upon the expertise of literary and drama specialists.
• You’ll analyse an extremely diverse range of texts from novelists, poets, short story writers, essayists, life-writers and playwrights. You’ll also locate these writers in their historical context, gaining an understanding of the history of black people in Britain through how they are represented in literature.

This MA is tailored for people who want to start a career in the game industry. One of the only programmes in the UK taught by actual game developers, it will teach you game design, art & animation, and game programming, and has a strong focus on entrepreneurship and business.

As a fast-growing 150-billion-dollar business, the game industry offers countless professional opportunities. The MA Computer Games: Art & Design is right for you if you want to make game development a sustainable career and to work in this creative and rewarding industry.

This is also one of the only programmes taught by actual game developers, designers, and artists with years of experience in the game industry.

Why Study MA Computer Games: Art and Design at Goldsmiths

• Learn to design and develop games using state of the art tools and game engines from actual game developer and industry veterans
• Focus on which skills you want to learn, through a selection of option modules you can choose from
• Collaborate with colleagues from other courses, including the MSc Computer Games Programming and the MA Independent Games and Playable Experience Design
• Build your portfolio through practical coursework
• Access state of the art game labs and facilities
• Get your first internship in the game industry (or work on a research project instead)
• Take part in the many events and game jams we organise every year, and be part of the creative and diverse environment that surrounds Goldsmiths
• Access the strong UK community of publishers and creators with innovative voices creating ground-breaking titles

This pioneering Masters offers interdisciplinary perspectives on international performance, and aims to understand performance in relation to the culture to which it contributes.

Why study MA Performance and Culture at Goldsmiths?

• The programme takes in diverse forms of theatre, including multicultural and street theatre, and practices such as:
  • Performance art
  • Dance
  • Ritual
  • Site-specific performance
  • A wide range of hybrid forms
• You will explore performance as a sociocultural process, using analytical principles from sociology, cultural theory, anthropology, history, philosophy, politics and theatre and performance.
• We have numerous links, locally and internationally, with a wide variety of theatres, companies and performers, all of which enhance your research possibilities.
• The programme will provide you with the appropriate categories of thought and methodological procedures for analysing, understanding and explaining performance processes as sociocultural practices: how and why they emerge from specific sociocultural and historical time place and space.

If you want to understand the impact of the Arab Spring or the ideology of ISIS, how US foreign policy is shaped by domestic politics, how international trade affects various parts of the world, how different cultures shape political decision making, or how international NGOs operate, this is the degree for you.

Why study BA International Relations at Goldsmiths?

• Our International Relations degree allows you to investigate the dynamics of a constantly changing world and develop the knowledge and skills to address the global challenges of the 21st century.
• You'll study the theory of international relations, global governance, international political economy, foreign policy and diplomacy, complemented by specialist area-focused modules on the Middle East, Africa, China and East Asia.
• You can also enhance your knowledge in your personal areas of interest, with option modules as diverse as security, development and human rights, foreign policy, conflict, and genocide.
• We’ll encourage you to put your knowledge into practice with our work placement module. Work with organisations in the international relations sector, such as policy think-tanks, development agencies and NGOs and get real experience before you graduate.
• Take your international knowledge further and spend part of your degree studying abroad with Erasmus+. You’ll immerse yourself in another culture, learn to see things from a new perspective and increase your employability.
• Studying an international relations degree in London means that Westminster, global business and diverse diasporas are all in easy reach.
• When you join Goldsmiths you’ll become part of a global academic family, with students from 140 countries and alumni around the globe.

These practical skills will equip you to lead and deliver the twin ambitions of transformation and sustainability driving the global economy. Our programme focuses on the means of generating economic impact through gains in revenue, competitiveness, productivity, project management, and profitability alongside the means of generating social impact through inclusivity, diversity, social mobility and equality.

The management of innovation is a critical element in ensuring countries, organisations, and individuals encourage speed to impact decision-making, enhanced digital skills and strategies for future-readiness. The focus has shifted from serving and valuing shareholders to serving and valuing stakeholders – customers, workforces, investors, regulators, anyone else impacted by your product, service, or brand.

Studying with is will allow you to participate in a lively guest lecturing schedule. In past years, senior leadership from the following organisations have come to discuss innovation challenges and opportunities with students on this programme:

• Technologists like Microsoft, Tesla, and Apple
• Consultancies, and think tanks like PwC, Ogilvy, and Accenture
• Media organisations like Monocle, the Financial Times, or The Economist
• Movements like the Bitcoin and Black Lives Matter

Conceived in the context of world-systemic transformation, this MA will give you the analytical tools to understand contemporary developments and world(s) through an encounter with post-colonial theory and international political economic issues.

We're witnessing today a tectonic shift in global geopolitics. The emergence of China, Brazil and India as global players, the development of global governance, the financial crisis, climate change – are all symptoms.

On this Masters you’ll grasp concepts like race, diaspora, hybridity, difference, grassroots development, HDI, multitude, immanence, and human rights.

These concepts are used to analyse practical, policy and activist issues arising from globalisation: global civil society, the role of international organisations (the IMF, WTO, UN and World Bank and global NGOs), intellectual property rights, social capital, financialisation, global governance and deep democracy.

You'll deal with issues like terrorism, microfinance, indigenous people, gender and sexuality, multiculturalism and environmental justice.