Course summary

This innovative, interdisciplinary Culture, Diaspora, 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, multiculture and postcoloniality; empire and the formation of modern Britain and contemporary transnational political communities, social identities and urban cultures

• 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.

• This interdisciplinary postgraduate course draws from ancient world studies, medieval and modern colonial history, postcolonial and decolonial sociology and anthropology, cultural, urban, literary and psychosocial studies, philosophy and law. It will introduce you to significant 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 the Race Forum at Birkbeck, research centres including the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Centre for Law and the Humanities and Centre for Media, Culture and Creative Practice, and the theories of racism and postcolonial and decolonial thought, medicine, ‘race’ and empire and psychoanalysis and colonialism reading groups.

• Birkbeck Library has an extensive teaching collection of books, journals and learning resources in relevant 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.

• This course consistently achieves high levels of satisfaction from Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey respondents. In 2019 and 2020, the student satisfaction rate was 100%. In 2021 the rate was 95% (the course was temporarily moved fully online due to COVID).

• If you are taking this course part time, you may be eligible for a Bonnart Trust Master’s Studentship which will cover the cost of your tuition fees. You must have received an offer of a place on the course by 31 May 2023 to apply.