Master of Arts in Social Entrepreneurship

at Goldsmiths, University of London United Kingdom

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.

There is a growth in the number of entrepreneurs starting businesses with social and environmental purposes. This exciting MA will enable you to develop a critical understanding of and practical insights into modes of social enterprise.

There is an urgent need for talented individuals who can design novel solutions to our most profound societal challenges.

This international MA provides practical and sociological tools to individuals motivated to develop alternative economic practices and frameworks to meet such challenges. These might include (but are not limited to) social enterprises, collaborative innovation networks, hubs, digital platforms, support intermediaries and/or policy proposals.

Benefitting from the MA’s timely educational content as well as from its firm roots in London’s rich networks, our students go on to become thought leaders in the burgeoning social innovation field, advancing it in a creative fashion from their chosen angle. Past graduates have gone on to create their own social enterprises or to work for prestigious organisations such as the Yunus Institute and Social Enterprise UK, while some have elected to carry out advanced research into social innovation.

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 Social Work is an academic and professional qualification which also provides a gateway to more specialist therapeutic qualifications and research degree programmes. Social work education at Goldsmiths has a long and distinguished record – we have one of the most respected social work units in the UK, and you'll be taught by established social work academics and associate lecturers who have considerable research and/or practice experience in their fields.

You will learn the values, skills, and knowledge needed to practise as a reflective and ethical social worker, and be well equipped for the challenges of contemporary social work practice. You also will be encouraged to make links between anti-oppressive practice, the social work values, the legal framework, theories, methods and skills of intervention, and social work practice throughout the programme. You will cover some of the following areas:

• Human growth and development
• Community needs and services
• Social work methods and skills
• Assessment in social work
• Law and organisational contexts of social work
• Research methods
• Children and families pathway
• Adults pathway
• Mental health and disability

The MA Art & Ecology is a fifteen-month studio-based post-graduate programme for emerging artists who want to engage in meaningful and transformative ways with the most pressing ecological questions of our time.

This is a unique programme located in the urban environment of South East London that seeks to develop new ways in which contemporary art practice can make interventions in a wide range of ecological contexts and extend the ways in which ecology is understood. During this MA we support artists to develop art practices in diverse sites and scales dedicated to imagining and shaping liveable futures.

The MA invites artists to develop innovative art projects grounded in rigorous artistic research and a profound understanding of how ecological challenges such as climate breakdown, pollution, and biodiversity loss are inseparable from questions of social justice. Alongside media including painting, sculpture, printmaking, installation, performance, art writing, textiles, digital media and video, this course supports artists who engage with forms of practice such as food production, sustainable data, citizen and expert science, re-wilding, inter-species care and co-dependence, somatic work, and ritual.

You will also have access to workshops on how to develop your artistic practice after graduation, including on topics such as the ethical and legal dimensions of working in particular situations and environments, which will give you real-world insights into the kinds of negotiations and realisations that are part of having an expanded practice.

The MA History is innovative, creative, free-thinking, stimulating, diverse and challenging – everything that is distinctive about history at Goldsmiths.

Why study MA History at Goldsmiths?

• The Department of History’s approach is thematic and interdisciplinary, with staff expertise spanning the histories of Britain, East and West Europe, South Asia and Africa.
• We are on the cutting-edge of our fields and the student-teacher ratio allows us to devote an unmatched amount of time to individual supervision.
• Our focus is primary research and we'll encourage you to follow your own historical interests. You'll be able to develop your specific subject interests through a range of option modules and the dissertation.
• You'll develop your research skills and your understanding of key debates and methods in historiography.
• In addition to the compulsory module (Explorations and Debates) and the Research Skills modules, you'll choose two options, one of which, if you wish, can be from another department at Goldsmiths or from the wide-ranging intercollegiate list (a list of MA modules available at other colleges of the University of London).
• You'll end the programme by writing a 15,000-word dissertation on a topic of your own choice, based on primary research. The process of writing the dissertation includes participating in, organising, and presenting at, the department's dissertation conference.

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

If this degree were a film we’d be watching the beginning and the end. We think, like Walter Benjamin, that it’s in these moments – in their inception and their obsolescence  – that you see the utopian possibilities of a form or social movement.

Are we in the midst of a beginning? What can we learn now from visual culture’s past? What’s happening to our bodies when we play a video game? What are the gestures involved in everyday life? How do our bodies relate to technology?

These are the kinds of topics we analyse on this MA. We want to go beyond the borders of a traditional film studies degree so we go back to the beginning of film history to explore what it meant to fashion yourself in an image, or for a society to see itself in an image. Then we explore how images gain meaning now, and where they’re going next.

The MSc Marketing & Technology aims to transform students into uniquely-trained individuals possessing the knowledge and skills required to be successful marketers in dynamic and technology-driven industries.

Companies such as Netflix, Airbnb, and Tesla have one thing in common: they break with the norms of existing markets and employ unconventional, technology-driven marketing approaches. Traditional marketing education all too often neglects the marketing abilities that these companies possess.

The MSc Marketing & Technology departs from the rather passive marketing logic that assumes markets and marketing channels are fixed features of reality. Instead, it shows how managers can proactively shape and create new markets and marketing landscapes.

The goal of this programme is to transform students into uniquely-trained individuals who understand how to leverage emerging technologies, such as 3D printing, Virtual Reality, and the Internet of Things, to design unique customer experiences, disrupt existing markets, and create entirely new ones.

The programme will direct students’ attention to significant and emerging technological trends, and show how they can address important social and environmental problems.

It seeks to enable students to discover new market opportunities that will have a positive impact on the economy, society, and the environment. Students will be equipped with the skills required to effectively navigate today’s technology-dominated marketing environments, and they will learn how to be successful marketers in the digital marketing era.

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.