Course summary

Birkbeck is a global centre for research and teaching on ‘race’ and racism. We are home to multidisciplinary communities of scholars and students, academic programmes and research centres committed to the study of this subject area. This innovative interdisciplinary course stretches across the arts and humanities and social sciences. It offers 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

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

• This interdisciplinary postgraduate course will introduce you to important historical and political debates and theoretical frameworks in the broad area of 'race' and racism, multiculture and postcoloniality. MA students can undertake an empirical or theoretical dissertation or a practice-based dissertation such as a film or an exhibition.

• Through our formal link with the University of São Paulo, Brazil, you can undertake an option module at the university as part of your study at Birkbeck.

• You will become part of a vibrant, stimulating and diverse intellectual environment. Birkbeck is the first higher education institution in London to receive the title University of Sanctuary. You will have access to the Race Forum at Birkbeck, research centres including the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and Centre for Law and the Humanities and there are specialist student reading groups that focus on particular subject areas such as medicine, ‘race’ and empire and psychoanalysis and colonialism.

• 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%; in 2022 it was 85%; and in 2023 it was 100%.

• filmmakers, journalists, teachers, curators, architects, novelists, poets, musicians and activists

• lecturers and researchers in the subject areas of history, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, urban studies, psychosocial studies and sociology

• psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and psychiatrists; barristers and solicitors.

• criminalisation and policing

• domestic violence

• refugees and asylum

• human rights

• homelessness

• imprisonment

• addiction

• youth and community work.