Master of Arts in Visual Anthropology

at Goldsmiths, University of London United Kingdom

This course will teach you how to use game design to develop aesthetic awareness, and create meaningful experiences. Students learn how to build compelling mechanics, craft innovative narratives, and develop immersive playable environments. Together, we will push games into new territories and intellectual domains.

As technologies have integrated into our everyday lives, elements from games have been woven into everything, from the way museums educate the public, to how scientists do cancer research. With the rise of mobile games, console creators no longer hold a monopoly on gaming platforms. This new-found freedom has resulted in an explosion of independent games – from putting players in immersive augmented worlds, to telling transformational personal narratives, these new experiences are redefining the rules of play.

Games are now part of everyday life. As a result, markets previously dominated by traditional media have begun to leverage the ability of games to tell stories, generate knowledge, and educate the public. An explosion of games and apps has created a new breed of entrepreneur, who uses small teams to create projects accessible to millions.

Why Study MA Independent Games Design at Goldsmiths?

• This MA has several informal focus areas students can choose from:
  • Independent games design and development
  • Mixed reality (XR), playful experiences, and installation design
  • Games for change
  • Machine learning and game user experiences
  • Using Creative Coding and Physical Computing
• You can build skills to start your own game design studio.
• You will be mentored on how to grow in your creative career.
• When you graduate, you can use game design in a wide range of fields both inside and outside the game industry, including independent games, XR studios, interactive film, advertising and media outlets, journalism, non-profits, education, design, and fine arts.
• You will be part of a supportive community of games creators who actively release titles, and have access to a large library of video games and board games.

The MA Sociology provides an advanced introduction to key debates about society, culture, and the world we live in. It combines a broad base of knowledge and theory, with a sharp focus on specific areas of expertise (methodological and theoretical) within the social sciences. You will also be able to build your core knowledge and skills for sociological research alongside a uniquely creative approach that enables you to focus on specialist areas.

You’ll be able to build on your core sociological knowledge and methodological skills by selecting from a range of option modules that enable you to tailor the degree to match your individual interests. You’ll join a community of students from around the world who have a range of backgrounds and interests, and who bring these unique perspectives to the study environment. We welcome graduates from fields such as social science, humanities and philosophy, as well as more creative and artistic pursuits.

The MSc Consumer Behaviour equips you with a comprehensive grounding in approaches to understanding consumer preferences, judgements, decision-making and behaviour.

You will learn how to use this knowledge to improve organisational strategy and success, in terms of targeting, product placement, advertising, marketing, influencing and protecting consumers.

The programme aims to enhance your employability by fostering the development of the real-life and job-relevant competencies and skills that are required to succeed in today's competitive job market. You will be provided with the strong knowledge base and hands-on research experience needed for succeeding in careers such as marketing, media, communications, advertising, consumer research, consumer insight, entrepreneurship, and public relations.

You will develop the skills necessary to conduct independent research and to understand:

• The psychological and cultural processes underlying consumer behaviour
• The psychology of consumer preferences and choices
• Psychological theories of attitude change, persuasion, and influence
• The psychology and strategy of branding
• How to create and sustain customer experience
• Behavioural economics (including the psychology of pricing)
• The psychological impact of various types of media and advertising

The MA Visual Anthropology offers a unique combination of anthropological theory and visual practice. It provides you with a strong foundation for producing visual work informed by anthropology.

Why study MA Visual Anthropology at Goldsmiths?

• You’ll approach visual anthropology through the study of the politics and aesthetics of representation, documentary and ethnographic film, and anthropological perspectives on art.
• As a practice-oriented MA, there is a clear emphasis on applying anthropological knowledge to the actual making of visual artefacts, and not just their analysis.
• The MA is open to people with a range of backgrounds in anthropology and related fields, so you’ll join a diverse group of students with varying perspectives.
• As a graduate, you’ll be well-placed to pursue a career in visual anthropology (be it research- or practice-oriented) as well as to bring an anthropological sensibility to the visual to other disciplines.
• You’ll have hands-on training in the use of digital camcorders, sound recording equipment and video editing, preparing you for your final visual project – a 20-minute film – as well as giving you practical vocational skills for after you graduate.

The BA in Drama and Theatre Arts is designed to foster creative, radical theatre-makers and thinkers. It is adventurous in form, international in scope and hands-on in practice.

The Complete Theatre Maker

• This degree supports you to become the complete theatre maker. At the heart of the programme is a balanced integration of theory and practice. Knowledge gained through making and doing adds to your conceptual understanding, while the insights gained in writing about theatre and society inform the choices you make in your practice-based work.
• Tutored by our diverse and talented team, you will develop technical skills in acting, directing, writing, sound, lighting, scenography, and costume. Bringing these skills together, you will learn how to collaborate and operate in companies, ready to take your own show on the road.
• You will be introduced to a wide range of theatre thinkers, and explore the history and cultural diversity of performance. You will develop a complex understanding of what it means to make theatre in an increasingly global 21st-century society. And with London’s rich theatre culture on your doorstep, you can draw on an exciting range of contemporary practice to inform your thinking and making.

The BA Drama and Theatre Arts is a radical and innovative degree. The curriculum is responsive to the global reach of our teaching staff, including expertise in African, American, Francophone, Japanese, and South Asian performance, as well as British, European, and Russian theatre traditions. We prepare theatre-makers who are socially, culturally, and politically engaged.

The degree explores what it means to perform in contemporary culture, mobilising a range of theatre and performance practices from the interpretation of play texts to devised ensemble work and the possibilities opened up by political protest, live art, and the avant-garde.

The world of news and journalism is changing at an unprecedented rate. This programme offers an individual and innovative blend of contemporary multimedia journalism that ensures you will be prepared for the future of a rapidly developing news industry.

You’ll learn a range of cutting-edge digital skills to help you investigate news stories. You’ll also learn how and why good journalism matters by putting it in its wider cultural context.

Why study BA Journalism at Goldsmiths?

• Learn from media professionals with extensive industry experience and leading academics involved in ground-breaking research.
• Work on a real-world news website (EastLondonLines), covering breaking news stories that really matter to the local community.
• Develop an arsenal of digital skills, and learn to integrate them with a core of essential reporting and news-writing skills. Digital skills taught on this programme include:
  • Video journalism
  • Data Journalism
  • Mobile Journalism
  • Web programming
• Get training with a range of digital video equipment to support your practice, including DSLRs, and ENG (electronic news gathering) cameras.
• Produce a long-form news feature on a subject of your choice, which will allow you to bring together all the digital and news-writing skills learned over the course of this degree. Examples of previous projects can be found below.
• Build up a portfolio of work, get advice on careers and work experience, and benefit from our close links with London’s thriving world-class media industry.

The past physically surrounds us: in landscapes, in places, people, museums, buildings and in the streets. People’s innate curiosity about the past is driving an expansion of the history and heritage industries.

These fields rely on people skilled in historical research and analysis, as well as those who understand the nature of the past in a modern post-colonial world. This dynamic and innovative programme will develop the skills you need to creatively use your discoveries in a range of public history and heritage contexts.

Over three years, you will learn the skills and methodologies of the historian, the relevance of historical awareness, and the importance of public history. You will also develop your understanding of the history and heritage sectors. You may have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in archives, museums, galleries, and other heritage organisations through a work-placement module. You graduate with a comprehensive portfolio of valuable and transferable knowledge and skills in public history and heritage, thus widening your career opportunities.

The MA Digital Media is unique in its combination of practical and theoretical approaches to contemporary media and technology.

This established and exciting degree is designed to help you understand digital transformations in media, culture, and society and apply this understanding in practice, in the media and creative industries and in further research. The programme will equip you with skills that can be applied to current and future developments in digital media, social media, computing, and other aspects of technology.

The MA Digital Media educates aspiring media practitioners and academics as well as early and mid-career professionals who seek to reflect on their roles in a structured and stimulating learning environment designed to give all students up-to-the-minute knowledge of digital media and the skills to apply that knowledge to future developments.

This programme offers three pathways:

• Pathway 1 is a Theory programme where you learn about developments in digital media and technology.  This pathway draws on media theory, critical theory, continental philosophy, science and technology studies, gender studies, critical race studies, the posthumanities, software studies and cultural studies to diagnose our present digital condition.
• Pathway 2 (Image Making) is a theory and practice programme.  Alongside engaging with digital media theory you will work with one or more of the following – animation, photography, video and other forms of moving image – to create installations, apps and single/multi-screen work that is responsive to a continually changing, and conceptually understood, digital landscape.
• Pathway 3 (Critical Computing) is a theory and practice programme where you will interrogate technical objects through critically learning a technical subject and by collectively criticising the results and processes involved – for example, by studying the racialisation of algorithms or exploring non-proprietary databases, operating systems, software licensing, programming, networking and open hardware in the shape of physical computing.

Taught jointly by the Departments of Anthropology and Social, Therapeutic and Community Studies, this MA offers a stimulating synthesis of theory and practice. In short, it is at the heart of what Goldsmiths is all about.

This MA, launched in 2015, is the third of three related pathways. The first, the MA Applied Anthropology and Community and Youth Work, was started in 1992 and is aimed at students who wish to pursue a career in youth and community work and who need a professional qualification.

A second pathway, the MA Applied Anthropology and Community Development, was launched in 2012 as an option for international or home students who do not need an NYA qualification and for those who want to specialise in community development.

This third pathway has been created in response to a growing number of applicants with an arts background and arts interests, and is aimed at students who wish to work in community arts. The three pathways entail different placements but are taught together, providing many opportunities for exchange of ideas and collaboration amongst students.

With its open language pair system, this linguistically and culturally diverse MA programme attracts applicants from around the world. Our trainee translators are supported to pursue a range of language combinations, and we welcome applications from students working with English and any other language. Language combinations pursued by our past students have included:

• English to Arabic
• English to Chinese
• Chinese to English
• English to Dutch
• English to French
• French to English
• English to German
• English to Italian
• Italian to English
• English to Polish
• English to Spanish
• Spanish to English
• English to Swedish
• English to Ukrainian

If you wish to work with a language that is not listed above, please note that applicants may indicate their preference for any language, translating either into or out of English.

The MA in Translation at Goldsmiths is one of the only programmes to assign students a professional translation mentor who will read your work and give dedicated feedback for you to implement as you progress throughout the programme.

Developed in line with professional translation industry standard, the translation mentoring scheme creates a unique opportunity to put your translation studies into practice, with the support of a translation expert who can act as an adviser for all aspects of life as a professional translator, such as time management, managing your finances, and understanding contracts, as well as support your practical translation skills.