Only at Goldsmiths

Monk the Labrador helps sensitise MA Ecology, Culture and Society students to the lessons that animals can teach

Goldsmiths alumni have long included household names in the arts and creative industries, from Vivienne Westwood to Kae Tempest, Bernardine Evaristo to John Cale, Alex James to Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Antony Gormley to Steve McQueen. But did you know that we also teach subjects that run the gamut of human rights, law, ecology, technology and architecture? These aren’t always fields typically associated with the College, but of course they are delivered in a uniquely ‘Goldsmiths’ way. Here we highlight just a few of them.

Criminology

Goldsmiths now offers a single-honours BA Criminology degree that’s shaping future generations of experts in youth work, counselling, human rights and counterterrorism. It offers an interdisciplinary approach while still being strongly rooted in the College’s sociology and urban studies traditions. Students are urged to think imaginatively and critically about things that other programmes may accept as the status quo. Jennifer Fleetwood, Senior Lecturer, explains: “We challenge our students to ask serious questions. Like can we abolish the police? And what would a world without prisons look like?”

This thinking spans continents: students cover issues in the UK and the USA but also learn about policing in India, dictators in South America, and women’s reproductive rights the world over. Jennifer adds: “Currently I have students researching subjects as diverse as violence against women in Turkey, and drug policy in Poland.”

Ecology, Culture and Society

While criminology students grapple with reinventing the socio-political status quo, those on the nascent MA Ecology, Culture and Society degree take a unique and existence-defining approach to a field of study that is typically thought of as a science, but – as they soon learn – is so much more.

The programme explores issues like runaway climate change, mass extinctions, biodiversity, animal interaction, and even the way ecology is reflected and reimagined in fiction. Not many other ecology programmes can say their reading list includes names like Ursula K. Le Guin, J.G. Ballard and N.K. Jemisin – nor can they say their teaching staff includes a Labrador.

One of the MA’s core modules, ‘The Ethics and Politics of Animals’, taught by Mariam Motamedi-Fraser, asks students to engage with the challenges raised by recent developments in conceptions of animals. “This work, which is certainly humbling in terms of understanding animal capabilities, has the potential to revolutionise how we think about animal-human relations,” explains Mariam. This line of thinking has major implications on our relationship to agriculture, domestication, ethics, politics and philosophy.

Research Architecture

Forensic Architecture has received global renown for its data-led, justice-oriented investigations that have real-world implications. From Greece to Grenfell, Hanau to Colombia, and an impressive range of other sites, this small and innovative research agency has a track record for holding to account enablers of human rights abuses, environmental destruction, and state violence. The organisation has investigated the killing of Mark Duggan in London, missing persons at the US-Mexico border, and drone strikes in Afghanistan – and much more (see page 6).

Postgraduates can study the MA Research Architecture, a core tenet of which is to push back in a post-truth world by taking the tools of investigation and using them to empower the people who are affected. At the time of writing, there is nowhere else students can study architectural and spatial practices as applied to conflict zones such as Syria and Ukraine, thereby adding meaningful evidence and research to the archives of human history in real time.

Bob Trafford, Research Coordinator at Forensic Architecture, describes the work of their small team of specialists as “like a mosquito: versatile and impactful”, adding that the founding of this unique and growing discipline “could only have happened at Goldsmiths”.

Find out more about these and other unique Goldsmiths degrees at gold.ac.uk/course-finder