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MA, PG Cert, PG Dip Culture, Diaspora, Ethnicity.

Birkbeck University of London, United Kingdom
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Course Overview

This interdisciplinary course examines the cultural experiences and representations of diasporic communities, with a particular focus on ethnicity and identity. Students will engage with theories and methods from fields such as anthropology, sociology, history, and literature to analyze the complex ways in which culture is constructed, contested, and maintained across different contexts. The course also considers the political and social implications of cultural diversity and how it shapes contemporary debates around race, identity, and belonging. Through a combination of lectures, seminars, workshops, and individual research projects, students will develop their critical thinking skills and gain a deep understanding of the complexities of cultural diaspora and ethnicity.

Additional Information

Students have the opportunity to specialize in specific areas of interest, such as postcolonial studies, migration history, or transnational cultures. The course also offers a unique chance for students to engage with cultural practitioners and community organizations through partnerships with leading cultural institutions and events.

Join Birkbeck University of London, where you will gain a deep understanding of culture, identity, and diaspora within a vibrant academic community committed to interdisciplinary research and teaching.

Birkbeck University of London is a world-renowned institution for the study of culture, identity, and diaspora. Our faculty are experts in their fields and have extensive experience in teaching and researching these topics. The university's location in the heart of London provides access to a rich cultural landscape and opportunities for engagement with diverse communities.

Why You Should Study This Course

This innovative, interdisciplinary culture, diaspora, and ethnicity course stretches across the social sciences and arts, and humanities. It offers you the opportunity to explore:

histories and cartographies of 'race' and racism, multicultural and postcoloniality; empire and the formation of modern Britain and contemporary transnational political communities, social identities, and urban cultures

connections between histories of colonization and contemporary social formations and inequalities in the UK

how local debates on 'race' and racism are shaped by the global geopolitics of the twenty-first century.

Graduates can pursue career paths in organizations and charities concerned with:

  • criminalization and policing

  • domestic violence

  • refugees and asylum

  • human rights

  • homelessness

  • imprisonment

  • addiction

  • youth and community work.

Graduates have also pursued careers such as:

  • teachers, film-makers, activists, curators, architects, novelists, poets, musicians, and journalists

  • lecturers and social researchers in the areas of sociology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and urban studies

  • psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and psychiatrists

  • barristers and solicitors.

  • There are currently several graduates undertaking doctoral research in this subject area too.

We offer a comprehensive Careers Service - Birkbeck Futures - your career partner during your time at Birkbeck and beyond.  At every stage of your career journey, we empower you to take ownership of your future, helping you to make the connection between your experience, education, and future ambitions.

General Eligibility

A second-class honors degree (2:2) or above in social sciences or humanities.

Part Time Work Details

20 hours of work permit weekly for international students.

What You'll Study

1 Year 1

CORE MODULES:

  • 'Race', Empire, Postcoloniality

  • Culture, Community, Identity

ENGLISH, THEATRE, AND CREATIVE WRITING OPTION MODULES:

  • A Confusion of Tongues: Illness, Language, Writing

  • Aesthetics and Cultural Theory

  • Being Human: Posthumanism and the 21st Century

  • Contemporary US Fiction

  • Culture and Human Rights

  • Disciplining Sex: Sexuality, Society and Modern Literary Culture

  • Histories and Representations of Medicine: Practices and Pedagogies

  • Medievalism: Re-presenting the Middle Ages

  • Modernising Victorians

  • Progress and Anxiety, 1789-1859

  • Text and Action: Renaissance Theatricality

  • Third Spaces: working with your own and other cultures (Core 2)

  • Victorian Femininities: the Myths, the Power, the Politics

  • Victorian London: Literature, Culture and the Urban Experience

FILM, MEDIA, AND CULTURAL STUDIES OPTION MODULES:

  • British Cinema and Television 1960-85

  • Comparative Cultural Policies

  • Contemporary American Cinema

  • Curating as Critical Practice (30 CATS)

  • Documentary: Filmmaking Histories and Digital Practices

  • Inside Out of Culture: organizations, placements, and practice

  • Issues in Global Television: Analogue, Digital, National, Transnational

  • Managing the Performing Arts

  • Media, Digitalisation, and the City (level 7)

  • Public Relations and Professional Communications

  • User Experience Design

GEOGRAPHY OPTION MODULES:

  • Anthropology, Culture, and Development

  • Cities and Urban Inequalities (Level 7)

  • Critical Social Geographies

  • Development Studies: Theoretical Approaches

  • Development, Aid, and Power

  • Energy and Climate Change (30 credits)

  • Environment and Policy

  • Gender and Development

  • International Political Economy of Childhood

  • Living with Climate Change (Level 7)

  • Race, Environment, and International Development (Level 7)

  • Social Studies of Childhood: Key Concepts and Issues

  • Understanding the City

HISTORY, CLASSICS, AND ARCHAEOLOGY OPTION MODULES:

  • Africa Imagined: Visions of a Continent, 1600-2000

  • Antisemitism, Holocaust, Colonialism, Gender: Connecting the Conversation

  • Archives and Memory

  • Barbarians, monsters, and other Others: encountering the Other, c.200-1000

  • Capitalism: Ideas, Systems, Practices

  • Contested Past, Troubled Present: Britain and Ireland since 1800 - Religion in Society and Politics

  • Crescent of Crisis: The Middle East and the Balkans from the Ottomans to Today

  • Critical Entanglements and Methods in the Medical Humanities

  • Digging for China: A Political, Cultural and Social History of Chinese Archaeology

  • Fascist Minds? Politics, Culture, and Psychology in the Age of Extremes

  • Introduction to Classical Culture

  • Mastering Historical Research: Birkbeck Approaches

  • Material Worlds

  • Me, Myself and You: Histories of Self and Belonging, 1500 to the 21st Century

  • Methods: Medicine, Culture, Text

  • Psychoanalysis and History

  • Queer Histories/Queer Cultures

  • Research Skills for Historians

  • The Archaeology of a Greek Sanctuary (Level 7)

  • The Cold War Goes Pop! Visualizing the Cold War through European Films and Comics

  • The Greeks and the sea

  • The Historian's Craft

  • The politics of culture in Neronian Rome

  • The Politics of the Past: Heritage in a Changing World

  • The Science of Progress: Darwin, Evolution and the Making of Modernity

  • The Silk Road: Imagining Global Cultures from the Middle Ages to UNESCO and BRI

  • Themes and Concepts in Archaeology

  • Theorizing Gender

POLITICS OPTION MODULES:

  • Global Politics, Governance, and Security

  • International Political Economy

  • Introduction to Quantitative Social Research

  • Investigating the Social World

  • Middle East Politics

  • Modern British Politics

  • Political Theory and Contemporary Politics

  • Qualitative Social Research

  • The Geopolitics of Environment and Resources

  • The Political Sociology of the Modern State

  • Theorising Social Research

  • War, Politics, and Society

PSYCHOSOCIAL STUDIES OPTION MODULES:

  • Education, Power, and Resistances

  • Investigating the Social World

  • Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Practice

  • Psychoanalysis and Culture

  • Texts and Interpretation

INDEPENDENT RESEARCH MODULE:

  • Independent Research Module

Language Requirement

  • IELTS6.0
  • TOEFL78
  • PTE58
  • Duolingo79
If English is not your first language or you have not previously studied in English, the requirement for this program is the equivalent of an International English Language Testing System (IELTS Academic Test) score of 6.5, with not less than 6.0 in each of the sub-tests.

Additional Information

This course is available: Part-Time, 2 Years (Course fee for local: £4,905; Course Fee For International Students: £9,015)

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