Postgraduate Studies

MA Politics, Development and the Global South 

This programme is distinctive in that it treats development as a site of contestation; it addresses the Global South as a producer, and not merely a consumer of theory, and as a site where novel forms of political struggle are emerging. This programme is firmly interdisciplinary. Scholars teaching in it have an international reputation, including expertise on Latin America, India, China, Japan, the Middle East and Africa. 

For further information, read the programme page or email f.carballo (@gold.ac.uk).

The Department of Politics and International Relations runs thee additional MA Programmes, all of these degrees offer modules in postcolonial and decolonial theory: MA Art and Politics, MA International Relations, MA Global Political Economy.

Staff associated with the Centre for Postcolonial Studies offer doctoral supervision in a vast array of areas. Look at their individual staff pages for information about their research expertise and their availability to supervise new PhD projects. 

PhD candidates affiliated with the centre

Mitxy Mabel Meneses

Mitxy is a PhD candidate funded by the Mexican Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) and associate lecturer in the Department for Politics & International Relations.

Her research focuses on transborderism and its policy implications at the U.S.-Mexico border, putting particular emphasis on transborder students living in the Cali-Baja Region. Her research stems from a critical engagement with contemporary border studies, migration, and international cooperation. Contact: m.menesesg (@gold.ac.uk).

Ruben Irving Huerta

Ruben is a PhD candidate with the project “Counter-Investigations: towards a framework for truth production in Mexico”, partially funded by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Teconología (Conacyt) of Mexico. His research revolves around journalism in Latin America and the innovation of narrative frameworks for transformative investigations. He has collaborated with the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ), the research agency Forensic Architecture, and the network for journalists in Latin America CONNECTAS. Twitter: @ihuertaz

Despoina Penny Demertzi

Despoina is a visual artist and PhD student/scholar. Her doctoral project is entitled 'Decolonizing The Self: Decolonial AestheSis (Mirror Touch Synaesthesia) and The Photobook Phenomenon as Participatory Praxis'. This research aims to conceive an epistemology of Decolonization based on Synaesthesia.

A fundamental question in her academic works reads as follows: what does it mean to decolonise Greece? Penny is a qualified art teacher and has lectured in diverse institutions in Asia and Europe.

As a photographer, Penny has collaborated with Anders Petersen, Stratos Kalafatis, Atelier Smedsby, Christian Caujolle, Mimar Sinan FUAM Research Center Istanbul and the Studio Vortex.

Katharina Richter

Katharina's PhD thesis is entitled: 'Struggling for another form of life: Decolonising the Degrowth Debate'. This research connects contemporary socioeconomic debates in Latin America with radical environmental and economic thought in the global North.

The discourse and practice of sumak kawsay (good living in Kichwa and Spanish) in Ecuador can be understood as an articulation of alternatives to development. Sumak kawsay require economic restructuring towards a social solidarity economy in harmony with the natural environment.

Similarly, the Degrowth school of thought aims to re-situate the economy within planetary boundaries through a decrease in production and consumption, combined with a revaluation of the reproductive labour of women and nature. This project fosters a dialogue between the two, weaving an 'ecology of knowledges' into a decolonial politics of Degrowth based on epistemological and ontological pluralism. 

Maelenn Le Bret

Maelenn’s research project is entitled 'Mate: from Griezmann to the yerbal'. Mate, which both designates the tea made out of yerba mate's leaf and the jar that contains it, has initially been consumed by the Guarani people in the Parana region. Today, more than one litre of mate is consumed daily by millions of people in South America as well as in the Middle East.

In these regions its consumption is synonymous with hospitality and sociability. In Europe and North-America, however, the ongoing commodification of this "authentic" beverage relies on the promotion of the plant’s healthy properties. 

This research aims to follow the route of mate, from the football fields where it is currently more and more seen, to the site of the plantations located at the border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. This research traces mate’s global itinerary and compares it to other stimulant substances, wondering why it didn’t succeed in the world market in the same way in which coffee, tea or cacao did.

A vital element of this investigation is to look the various spaces (and meanings) of mate’s consumption, juxtaposing the resilience of a Guarani ritual with the emergence of a new “magic potion” in the era of mass health-food consumption.

Vanessa Lehmann

Vanessa is a PhD-candidate at the Politics Department at Goldsmiths where she works on forms of frontier capitalization of the Sahara Desert in Egypt. Her work centres around issues of critical ecology, urban and environmental transformation, postcolonial theory, the desert, the Middle East and Egypt in specific. 

Next to her PhD research, Vanessa runs Konesh Space, a migrating platform for critical and creative spatial practice. 

Vanessa has received a number of grants and awards for her academic work including the CHASE DTP scholarship of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Alan Little Memorial Award as well as grants from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the German-French University (DFH). 

Tancrède Fulconis

Tancrède Fulconis' research project is entitled “Policing the Political: Universalism, Exception, and Othering in (Post)Colonial France”. This dissertation explores the relationship of the French Republic to itself in the aftermath of the formal end of colonisation.

While the Republic continues to see itself, in the lineage of the enlightenment, as the bearer of a long universalist tradition in the “values of the Republic”, the (post)colonial exercise of othering provides a sinister counter-narrative which undermines the stability of the Republic’s self-reference.

Furthermore, this project challenges the prevalent conception that the violence of colonisation epitomised a betrayal of the “values of the Republic,” when instead, these values are shaped by their manifestation in the various moments of ruptures that form the ipseity of the (post)colonial Republic.

Tancrède identifies four time periods, revolving around the major states of emergency in Metropolitan France. These periods are moments of qualitative changes in the co-constitution of the Republican subject and its constitutive ‘other’, and mirror imperatives to police the intelligibility of political demands emanating from the margins.

Susuana Amoah

Susuana is an artist, curator, cultural activist, and a PhD student in the Department of Art. Susuana is also a member of the Black Curators Collective and is the Campaign Manager at the Free Black University. Her research explores decolonial curatorial practices in public contemporary art galleries. This research project analyses how the standardisation of European modernist theories and curatorial practices has contributed to cultural colonialism. The project also examines how decolonial praxis can be used to undo institutional racism in these spaces.   Twitter: @blackgallerina 

Lydia Ayame Hiraide

Lydia Ayame's reserach is titled, 'All the Blacks Are Men, All the Whites Are Women, But What About the Greens? An Intersectional Analysis of Environmental Activism in the UK and France'.

Her research asks how an intersectional framework helps us to understand environmental movements and examines the relevance of social categories to environmental claims.

The project seeks to recentre and highlight the presence of marginalised voices in our collective environmental struggle which, no doubt, constitutes a vital moment in our global history. 
Contact: Lhira001@gold.ac.uk
Twitter: @LydiaHiraide