Culture, Diaspora, Ethnicity

Overview

This interdisciplinary Culture, Diaspora, Ethnicity programme at Birkbeck, University of London  stretches across the social sciences and arts and humanities and explores: 

• debates on 'race' and racism, multiculture and postcoloniality; empire and the formation of modern Britain and contemporary transnational political communities, social identities and urban cultures

• the connections between histories of colonisation 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.

The Postgraduate Diploma allows you to explore your interests in these subject areas and enables you to progress to, and complete, the MA Culture, Diaspora, Ethnicity if you wish.

Highlights

• The programme enables students from all backgrounds to pursue their own particular interests. It draws from postcolonial sociology and anthropology, history, cultural, urban, literary and psychosocial studies, philosophy and law and introduces you to different historical and political debates and theoretical perspectives in the broad multidisciplinary area of 'race' and racism, multiculture and postcoloniality.
• Through our formal link with the University of São Paulo, Brazil, you can undertake an option module at the University of São Paulo as part of your programme of study at Birkbeck.
• You will become part of a vibrant, stimulating and diverse intellectual environment, with access to our Race Forum, research centres including the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck Law School Centre for Law and the Humanities and the Centre for Media, Culture and Creative Practice, and reading groups such as the Postcolonial Studies Reading Group.
• Birkbeck Library has an extensive teaching collection of books, journals and learning resources in sociology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, psychosocial studies and related disciplines. You will also be able to use the rich research resources nearby including Senate House Library, the British Library of Political and Economic Science (the LSE Library), the SOAS Library and the British Library. 

• In the Research Excellence Framework (REF), Sociology at Birkbeck was ranked 13th in the UK.

Careers and Employability

Graduates include youth and community workers and workers for organisations and charities whose concerns include criminalisation and policing, domestic violence, refugees and asylum, human rights, homelessness, imprisonment and addiction. They also include barristers and solicitors, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and psychiatrists, lecturers and social researchers in the areas of sociology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, urban studies and social policy, teachers, film-makers, activists, curators, architects, novelists, poets, musicians, journalists and those working in the arts and cultural industries.