MPhil/PhD Programmes and Research Culture

Welcome to the MPhil/PhD web pages in the Sociology Department. Please check out the links down the right hand side for further information.

Goldsmiths is an exciting space for postgraduates, with numerous international speakers passing through, a huge range of interdisciplinary seminars and reading groups and a very open and warm environment for the exchange of ideas.

There are two MPhil/PhD programmes in Sociology and Visual Sociology in the Department of Sociology.  The latter was established in 2007 with a dedicated training programme and media laboratory, attracting six students in its first year and producing its first successful PhD thesis in 2010. These two programmes bring together a large number of graduate students with applicants coming from all over the world, including North and South America (USA, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Argentina), the Caribbean, the Far East (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, Thailand) and elsewhere in Europe (Greece, Italy, Germany, Belgium, France, Austria, Spain, Serbia, Estonia, Portugal, Hungary, Scandinavia).

Supervision is offered in a range of areas in sociology, including: race, ethnicity, religion and nationalism; gender and social life; culture and digital sociology; inventive and sensory methods and live sociology; urban culture, world cities, economies and social exclusion; life-sciences, medicine, technology and health; children and young people; human rights and political sociology; socio-legal studies and global justice; social and cultural theory; fanaticism and political theory; and visual sociology. Take a look at the academic staff in the department, but also at the range of different theses awarded since 2000 and some our current students.

Much of the work of a PhD is organised through one-to-one or one-to-two supervisory sessions. Careful consideration of the best supervisor for you is important.

Students on both the Sociology and Visual Sociology MPhil/PhD programmes are able to participate in:

• a range of methods training courses in both quantitative and qualitative methods, which introduce students to the sociological tools of the trade as well as innovative advanced methods (some developed by Goldsmiths sociologist and specific to our department).

These methods training courses are designed to help you with your MPhil/PhD study but also to help you become a full and capable social researcher equipped with the range of advanced methods skills that we are able to offer.

Our students attend dedicated seminar series, including:

• ‘Beginnings and Futures’, which is a regular seminar series, in which new and established scholars discuss their sociological biography.  Speakers have included: Paul Gilroy, Ruth Levitas, David Hesmondhalgh, Les Back, Bevereley Skeggs, Fran Tonkiss, Nikolas Rose, John Solomos, Mary Maynard, Gregor McLennan, Steph Lawler, Andrew Sayer, Nick Thoburn and Sara Ahmed. 
• Special seminars for graduate students held by visiting speakers, including Jeffrey Alexander, Donna Haraway and Judith Butler. 

• ‘Professional Development Seminar’, which is a seminar series discussing practical issues arising from student’s own research, but also their future career (including topics such as ethics, being professional a sociologist,  how to publish a paper, using online media, and so on).

In addition, there is a student-led virtual forum - Common Room - to enable those on fieldwork or working away from Goldsmiths to stay in touch. Each year students visit Cumberland Lodge (one of the locations for the Oscar winning film The King’s Speech in one of the Royal Windsor parks) for an intensive collaborative research weekend. This inspiring experience resulted in the idea for two research student conferences, (Re)Creating: Methodologies, Concepts, Practices (2005), and Exploding Method (2007). We also co-run the NYLon network (with LSE and New York University) which offers opportunities for PhD students to travel and participate in international research student networks, with departmental support for ESRC sponsored field-trips.

Research students participate fully in the research culture of the department, including contributing to departmental publications (such as Streetsigns which is an illustrated magazine produced by postgraduate students associated with CUCR - the Center for Urban and Community Research), running research blogs, hosting student-led seminars and conferences, inviting talks from visiting scholars and students from across the UK and overseas, constructing platforms for new forms of mediated intellectual spaces, and much more.

A Virtual Graduate School exists within the College’s online learning environment, providing additional research training, research support and online, asynchronous, interdisciplinary seminars and conferences, in order to give greater access to part-time students, and those away conducting fieldwork. The Graduate School organizes an MPhil/PhD Symposium in which first year PhD students organise and present their work to an interdisciplinary forum. Specialized seminar groups for research students are also supported by the Graduate School, with speakers including Gayatri Spivak, Jean-Luc Nancy and Pierre Lévy.

It is on the basis of our excellence in research training and the vibrant research culture that we have had arts, humanities and social science research council recognition (ESRC and AHRC) for a number of years and we have been awarded with Queen Mary College funding and recognition for an ESRC Doctoral Training Centre  and http://www.londonsocialscience.org.uk/index.html]. Only a handful of the very top social science research departments in the UK have been given this hugely prestigious award.

Dr David Oswell (e-mail d.oswell) is the Director of MPhil/PhD Programmes and Bridget Ward is the Postgraduate Research Officer.

Details on how to apply and funding opportunities. For any other questions please contact the Postgraduate Research Officer.