Master of Arts in Creative and Life Writing

at Goldsmiths, University of London United Kingdom

This programme is the first of its kind at the University of London. It offers a scientific approach to the study of human behaviour, giving a broad understanding of psychological theory and research, and will help develop your understanding of the processes influencing how people think, feel, behave, and interact.

The programme is particularly well suited to those interested in a career change into the field of Psychology, or who have previously studied some psychology (but not sufficient to meet the BPS criteria for GBC) and would like the accreditation to work in the field professionally. It is also suited to applicants from outside the UK who would like to obtain a BPS accredited University of London qualification which will allow them to follow professional training programmes.

Fusing Goldsmiths' academic excellence and professional training from the Horniman Museum, the MA in Anthropology & Museum Practice provides you with a uniquely comprehensive set of skills.

Why study MA Anthropology and Museum Practice at Goldsmiths?

• Whether you're a professional looking to expand your subject expertise in anthropology, or an anthropologist looking to move into the museum sector, the course will provide you with the skills and knowledge you need to make a difference in your career.
• This degree is run in partnership with The Horniman Museum and Gardens. You'll learn from professionals who work with the institution's world-renowned anthropology collection, and gain practical skills in curation and conservation, using material and digital archives, running museum education programmes and engaging diverse audiences.
• You'll analyse museums as sites of imagination and distinction and think about how they can be more inclusive places.
• If you haven’t studied anthropology previously, you’ll have the opportunity to sit in on the Masters-level Introduction to Social Anthropology module, which will give you a solid grounding in the subject - and enable you to hit the ground running.

The MA Filmmaking (Directing Fiction) is the premier place to develop your skills as a director, working on a range of projects from personal ‘essay’ films to large-scale shoots with professional actors and feature crew.

This Masters, a pathway of the MA Filmmaking, will enable you to gain a full understanding of how to collaborate on all stages of filmmaking, from scripting and pre-production through shoot, post-production and marketing/exhibition of your work. It will build your skills and confidence in expressing your unique vision and conveying it to your team.

What we offer

• The programme is housed in a new purpose-built media facility equipped with state-of-the art teaching spaces including film and photography studios equipped with Arri lighting and Greenscreen, Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Film Editing, Animation, Digital Special Effects, Pro Tools Audio Postproduction and Foley suites.
• We have extensive production facilities and informal rehearsal and meeting spaces where you can discuss and collaborate with scriptwriters, actors, producers and your shoot team.
• We also have established relations with casting directors, agents, production designers and other professionals who will both advise you and provide their skills to enhance your productions.
• You work on at least one film per term in your specialist role, culminating in a major production towards the end of the degree. In addition to your specialist area, you attend classes in related disciplines such as Film Directing and Editing and collaborate with students across specialisations on film projects. 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.

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.

This degree allows you to explore critical perspectives in literature and media alongside each other while developing your skills in creative writing (script and short story) and editing.

Why study BA Media and English at Goldsmiths?

• The media shapes our lives in many unseen ways, from our views on race and religion to the way we see the economy. You’ll be given the tools you need to understand and address these issues. We encourage you to be critical – a vital skill for questioning the status quo.
• You’ll develop a vocabulary for discussing and analysing works of literature from different genres and historical periods.
• This course offers you the chance to cultivate your creative skills – you’ll be creating screenplays for film and TV, plays for radio, and short stories. These will form a portfolio that you can show to future employers.
• You’ll gain an understanding of media production and how writing impacts on the technical aspects of the media industry.
• We regularly host events in which major international researchers, writers and critics present and talk about their work; they have included Danny Boyle, Gurinder Chadha, Noel Clark and Sir Lenny Henry.

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.

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.

Radio and audio have the potential to be transformative, to further the human experience. It’s a medium that creates a sense of intimacy while continually generating questions. This is a programme that empowers you to create something permanent, something with a life beyond your own – something only sound can achieve.

The MA poses questions about the influence of radio as a medium and the power it has to stir emotions, evoke feelings, and conjure vivid mental images. We look at the ways in which recording technologies can preserve and hold on to an aspect of our existence – be that a cultural exchange or an artistic communication – and how we can inspire future generations with the work we create.

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 programme is one of the few taught Masters programmes of its kind in the world. Covering historical and philosophical bases of theatre and performance practices from different parts of the world, this degree investigates indigenous and contemporary performance and theatre traditions from a variety of cultural contexts.

Why study MA World Theatres at Goldsmiths?

• This degree trains graduates for employment in a range of positions in theatre, government, the cultural sector, and higher education, that require solid intellectual preparation and knowledge of the field.
• You’ll cover the historical contexts and philosophical bases of theatre and performance practices from different parts of the world, some of which are rarely introduced in UK higher education. This will involve studying the indigenous and contemporary performance and theatre traditions from a variety of cultural, national and international contexts.
• You’ll be introduced to the whole range of drama, theatre and performance practices from many areas of the world.
• Where possible, you’ll be provided access to industry opportunities in order to extend your study, in particular with our new Associate Organisation, LIFT, and its biennial festival of international theatre, as well as its on-going programme of activities.