MPhil and PhD Programmes
The Department of Visual Cultures fosters high-level, innovative research at MPhil and PhD level through a combination of taught courses, personal research and tutorial supervision. Learning is supported by a variety of staff-student research seminars and workshops.
Our programmes have a modern and contemporary emphasis and we currently have a large, international cohort of research students pursuing diverse projects.
MPhil/PhD Visual Cultures Research Areas
MPhil and PhD in Visual Cultures
The department welcomes proposals from applicants wishing to explore art within a broad framework of critical theory, philosophy and cultural studies; including but not limited to issues of cultural difference, performativity, visual display, aurality, encounters with audiences and the production of subjectivities. The areas designated below describe some of our main research focuses, though doctoral research in the department is by no means limited to these.
For more information please contact the programme leader, Dr Jean-Paul Martinon, e-mail j.martinon (@gold.ac.uk).
The Application and Doctoral Research Process
You apply with an individual research project. You are allocated a primary supervisor and a secondary supervisor so that you have a range of contacts within the department. In addition you attend a weekly PhD seminar which helps broaden your theoretical grounding, and a London Visual Culture Research Forum which establishes links with students from other postgraduate programmes across London. Many PhD students also have the opportunity to work as teaching assistants within the department, providing them with invaluable experience and reinforcing the coherence of the taught provision.
For full details of the programme and for information on how to apply, please see our on-line prospectus entry for MPhil and PhD in Visual Cultures, where you will also find brief information on staff research specialism.
MPhil and PhD in Curatorial/Knowledge
This degree strand explores 'the curatorial' as distinct from 'curating'. 'Curating' deals with the mechanisms of staging exhibitions and is concerned with the discursive sphere that surrounds such stagings. 'The curatorial', by contrast, addresses all that actually takes place within practices and contexts of exhibiting, whether through curatorial intention or not. The 'knowledges' in question here are not discursive and explicit, but are actively produced in and around the curatorial practice itself. A central aim of the programme is to elucidate these participative and embedded knowledges. The degree is intended for those who are already working in the field in some capacity and have a body of knowledge and experience which they might like to reflect on theoretically.
For more information please contact the programme leader, Professor Irit Rogoff, email i.rogoff (@gold.ac.uk)
More information can be found on our Curatorial Knowledge pages.
MPhil and PhD in Research Architecture
Can spatial practice become a form of research? Might the notion of architecture be expanded to engage with questions of culture, politics, conflict and human rights? This innovative practice-driven PhD programme is aimed at practitioners or architecture and other related spatial practices who would like to develop long-span research projects within a theoretical context.
For more information please contact the programme director, Eyal Weizman, e-mail e.weizman (@gold.ac.uk).