Join the largest

centre for cultural

studies in the country,
which produces world-
leading research and
has more than
150 MA and PhD
students
Postgraduate
Cultural Studies
at Goldsmiths
2 www.gold.ac.uk/cultural-studies
*******
Our research partners
include architects, planners,
artists, activists, global NGOs, new
media studios and museums
Some of our Masters feature industry
placements, including the opportunity to
work with organisations in India or China
Our busy events calendar includes
thought-provoking talks from
academics at Goldsmiths
and other universities
Key features
Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths
Visit www.gold.ac.uk/pg/cultural-studies for full details of our degrees 3
Goldsmiths Centre for Cultural Studies (CCS) is
dedicated to theoretical and practical explorations in
contemporary culture. We specialise in the study and
design of culture, such as media technologies, software,
art, urban space, and interventions in global geopolitics.
We engage at the same time in theoretical enquiry.
The Centre for Cultural Studies started in 1998
with one PhD student, six borrowed MA
students from the Department of Media and
Communications, half an academic member of
staff and a small one-off bequest. We now have
more than 150 postgraduate students and are
the largest centre for cultural studies in the UK.
Our teaching programmes are integrally
involved with the world of practice. They
incorporate laboratory projects, exhibitions,
performance and activism. Our students
have placements with cultural organisations
in London and around the world.
We are book writers of inuential and
politically engaged texts in cultural theory.
Our research partners include architects,
planners, artists, activists, global NGOs, new
media studios and museums. Our research
outcomes are texts, technological art,
software, architecture/planning interventions.
Skills and experience
All our students gain a thorough grounding
in cultural theory. They learn how to plan
research and write proposals for public and
private-sector funding. Many organise events,
exhibitions and conferences as part of their
study. With us, you gain experience of working
in groups to develop projects in software
development, urban solutions, media
production and the audio-visual arts. You can
also acquire practical knowledge for project
development in organisations based in Asia,
Africa and elsewhere in the emerging world.
And you can learn techniques and strategies
leading to establishing your own public,
private or third sector enterprises.
Future careers
Many of our MA students go on to doctorates
and subsequent academic careers at eminent
universities in the UK and abroad. Graduates
also work in programme development in arts
organisations, in NGOs and the public sector.
Others develop their own practice in software,
media and art, while others combine in
establishing project networks and start-ups
in the creative industries.
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Explore the campus
at vimeo.com/
goldsmiths/tour
Visit www.gold.ac.uk/pg/cultural-studies for full details of our degrees 5
Our degrees
MA in Culture Industry
1 year full-time or 2 years part-time
www.gold.ac.uk/pg/ma-culture-industry
Using an innovative mixture of advanced
cultural theory and practice-based elements,
this MA aims to put debates about organisation
and production at the forefront of cultural
thinking. You can also undertake placements
within the culture industry in order to study
specic practices in action. A collaboration
between the Department of Media and
Communications and the Centre for Cultural
Studies, the programme is aimed at graduates
with an interest in working and intervening
in the cultural industries. Some candidates
may come via the traditional academic route,
while others will have experience of working
within the cultural eld before undertaking
the degree. If you want to incorporate
contemporary thinking on the organisation
and work of culture into your practice or
research, this is the programme for you.
MA in Cultural Studies
1 year full-time or 2 years part-time
www.gold.ac.uk/pg/ma-cultural-studies
This MA provides an intensive study in cultural
theory and in substantive cultural studies. Its
in every sense a programme in global cultural
studies, both in its engagement with cultural
difference and in its encounter with the
geopolitics of 21st-century capitalism. By the
end of the programme you will have covered
a considerable amount of high-level cultural
theory. You will study the most advanced
theorists of and questions surrounding both
the new cultural theory of Deleuze, Negri and
Agamben as well as classical British cultural
studies of the tradition established by Stuart
Hall. In addition you can choose from a range
of options that introduce a material focus to
complement the theory you have covered
for example, in digital and genetic media,
in urban space, in the creative industries, in
art and the visual culture of everyday life.
MA in Asian Cultural Studies
1 year full-time or 2 years part-time
www.gold.ac.uk/pg/ma-asian-cultural-studies
Combining critical theoretical perspectives
with an in-depth regional focus, this unique
programme provides you with the tools to
make sense of the ascendance of Asia and its
impact on contemporary culture and
geopolitics. The Masters incorporates the very
highest level of cultural theory and study in
global political economy. We feature an
engagement with the arts and practice,
drawing on Goldsmiths unique position and
standing in the context of Londons urban
experience. One of this programmes
reference points is the British tradition of
cultural studies. It extends this to the arena of
global geopolitics. Here theory, economics,
politics, the arts and Asia itself are conceived
as cultural. This Masters also gives you the
opportunity to study Mandarin in cooperation
with our newly established Confucius Institute.
MA/MSc in Creating Social Media
1 year full-time or 2 years part-time
www.gold.ac.uk/pg/
ma-creating-social-media
This unique theory and practice programme
combines computing and cultural studies
to provide you with the practical and critical
skills to shape the future impact of social
media. You will analyse existing ideas,
approaches and tools, and plan, develop,
hack and implement ground-breaking
interventions. Social media, at its most
interesting, develops new forms of connecting,
relating, sharing and competing. Effective and
innovative social media creation, therefore,
involves theoretical and practical knowledge
of both software development and social
processes. Hackdays, open innovation and
the power of networks are becoming core to
the future of many organisations, and this
programme equips you to accelerate the
impact of social media in your chosen eld.
6 www.gold.ac.uk/cultural-studies
Our degrees continued
MA in Interactive Media:
Critical Theory & Practice
1 year full-time or 2 years part-time
www.gold.ac.uk/pg/ma-interactive-media-
critical-theory-practice
Developed by the Digital Culture Unit (see
right), this MA offers you equal opportunity to
develop theory and practice-based research
about how information systems are embedded
in the technical, cultural, aesthetic and
political structures of society, and how we
interact with them. Building on the research
excellence in the CCS in software studies,
media philosophy and digital arts practices,
youll learn to employ our methodologies
to enhance your own skill set. Your research
and experiments will develop a critical
understanding of technical objects and the
way they are implicated in who we are today.
The programme will help you prepare for a
career in the cultural, creative, educational,
analytical, and computational sectors.
MA in Postcolonial Culture & Global Policy
1 year full-time or 2 years part-time
www.gold.ac.uk/pg/
ma-postcolonial-culture-global-policy
Were witnessing a tectonic shift in global
geopolitics. The emergence of China, Brazil
and India as global players, the development
of global governance, the nancial crisis,
climate change are all symptoms. This MA
will give you the analytical tools to understand
contemporary developments and world(s)
through an encounter with postcolonial
theory, activism, global policy and international
political economic issues. Youll deal with
issues like terrorism, micronance, indigenous
people, gender and sexuality, multiculturalism
and environmental justice. The MA includes a
supervised and assessed practical placement,
and can range from NGOs in India or Africa,
arts organisations in China, indigenous
activists in Latin America, to London-based
publishers or nancial organisations.
MPhil & PhD in Cultural Studies
3-4 years full-time or 4-6 years part-time
www.gold.ac.uk/pg/
mphil-phd-cultural-studies
The programme offers an interdisciplinary
approach to the study of culture. Well
introduce you to a variety of perspectives and
traditions, animated via a creative interface
between disciplines. Youll develop a
fundamental grounding in social and cultural
theory, cultural studies and cultural research,
as well as skills in ethnography, digital media,
textual and audio-visual analysis. You are
encouraged to deploy these methods to
articulate your appreciation of crucial debates
in the public domains of the media, the
culture industries, formal and informal
institutions, and in the wider contemporary
cultural scene. Youll be able to draw on
wide-ranging and interdisciplinary supervisory
teams and if your thesis is partly by other
media, specialist supervision will be provided.
Student insight
Emilie, MA in Interactive Media:
Critical Theory & Practice
On the MA in Interactive Media you
meet people who are very much in tune
with your own interests, creating
an invaluable peer-to-peer network.
I think on an MA course this is vital.
Visit www.gold.ac.uk/pg/cultural-studies for full details of our degrees 7
Our research
The Centre for Cultural Studies is a postgraduate
teaching and research centre with a small number of
academic staff, but a great deal of inuential research.
Our outcomes include technological art, novels,
software, architecture/planning interventions, historical
and literary texts, contributions to zine cultures, blogs
and online forms, and politically engaged books.
In the past year we have published books such
as Luciana Parisis Contagious Architecture,
Matthew Fullers co-authored Evil Media, and
Scott Lashs co-authored China Constructing
Capitalism. Bernard Stiegler, one of the
worlds leading media philosophers with some
20 books to his credit, has been a part-time
professor at the CCS for half a decade.
Wang Hui, author of books at Harvard and
Verso, and a leading Chinese cultural and
political theorist, is joining us as a professor in
2014. Julia Ng, who just completed a post-doc
at Harvard to join our staff, draws on archival
work in path-breaking articles on mathematics
and literature in the context of Walter
Benjamins encounter with Gershom Scholem
in journals like MLN (Modern Language Notes).
Cultural theory is a key focus of the CCS and,
like all our research, feeds directly into teaching.
The Centre is engaged in practice and
design-based research, for example in
the work of Graham Harwood, whose
politically infused conceptual and media
art is commissioned by Tate and collected
by Centre Pompidou amongst others, and
exemplies art as a form of enquiry. We
develop research with computer scientists,
statisticians, architects, artists, global NGOs
and urban planners. We see research not just
as analysis but as making. We see it, at the
same time, as a political intervention in an
expanded mode of action research. We work
in the areas of postcolonial study, philosophy,
software studies, critical theory, subaltern
studies, new media, technology and creativity.
The CCS has a focused research specialism
in emerging global geo-politics as evidenced
by John Hutnyks research on diasporic
South Asian media forms, music and lm,
Bhaskar Mukhopadhyays work on vernacular
globalisation and the invention of markets
in India, and Scott Lashs research on China.
We host the Digital Culture Unit, which brings
together researchers at the Centre who have
a special expertise in digital culture in the
broadest sense. Here the focus of our research
is using empirical, inventive and speculative
methods to take part in and understand the
changes computing is making to all forms of
life. We have one of the highest concentrations
of internationally reputed scholars in the
digital culture eld in the UK, making it ideal
for both Masters and Doctoral students aiming
to work in a research intensive environment.
At the CCS we have seen, in 10 years, some
40 PhDs to completion, and currently have a
community of over 100 students. Our funded
projects have been world-leading initiatives,
bringing substantial networks of scholars to
Goldsmiths, on borders, metadata, emerging
global economies, global culture industries,
software studies and vernacular globalisms.
To read more about our academics, please
go to www.gold.ac.uk/cultural-studies/staff
Contact us
See www.gold.ac.uk/pg/ccs
for full details of our degrees.
If you need further
information, please email
[email protected].
To nd out more about us,
go to www.gold.ac.uk/ccs
or email [email protected].
Find us on Facebook by searching for Goldsmiths Cultural Studies

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Graduate insight
Dan, MA in Cultural Studies
The Centre offers an exciting and
unique research space for interrogating
existing forms of knowledge. Students
are free to experiment with new ideas,
and exchanges can be lively, sharp
and sinewy. I used my MA
research to develop material for
my forthcoming book with
a political-philosophy
publisher.